Object & Utility Input Nodes

These nodes gather and organize the objects that feed into the mesh-input nodes covered in Mesh Input Nodes.

Objects

Holds a list of objects (or collections) to feed into a Target, Source, or Scene socket elsewhere in the tree. A new empty slot is always kept at the bottom so you can keep adding entries.

  • Filter row — toggles which object types (Meshes, Curves, Surfaces, Metas, Fonts, Lights) are offered when searching for objects to add, plus a Collections toggle that switches the whole node to picking collections instead of individual objects. Ctrl-click a filter icon to select only that type; Shift-click to select all other types.

  • Add Selected (in the node’s extra options, expand with the arrow) — appends every currently selected object that passes the current filter. Shift-click to add duplicates even if an object is already present.

  • Select Added — selects every object currently listed in the node, in the viewport.

  • Set all UVs to — sets a named UV map as the active-pick UV map on every mesh object in the node. Shift-click to create that UV map on any object that doesn’t already have it. Ctrl-click instead records each object’s current active UV map as its per-object pick.

  • Set Objects active UV — pushes each object’s per-object picked UV map back to being that object’s actual active UV map in Blender.

Each individual mesh entry can also, once picked, expose a Pick UV Map toggle (choose a UV map other than the active one) and a Use Cage toggle (choose a manually-modeled cage object for that entry specifically — see Auto Sort, Join & Explode, and Auto Cage).

Join Objects

Takes a list of objects and treats them as a single combined mesh for the rest of the chain, without actually joining them in your scene. Give it a Joined Name to control what the combined object is referred to as in logs and (if relevant) in Auto Sort — leave it blank to use the node’s own name.

File Names

Feeds a folder, file-name prefix, and object-name-derived suffixes into an Output Image Path’s Split Output socket, and/or controls frame ranges for an animated bake. See File Naming, Tokens & Frame Ranges for the full token and frame-range syntax; this node is what makes those tokens available.

  • Frame Ranges — a comma-separated list such as 1,3, 4-12, 12-24:4. Use #3 (or any digit count) anywhere in the list to zero-pad frame numbers to that width.

  • Use Animated Seed (clock icon) — uses a different noise seed per frame so bakes of the same setup at different frames don’t all show identical noise patterns.

  • Persistent Data (ghost icon) — keeps render data cached between frames to speed up multi-frame bakes, at the cost of extra memory.

  • Path/Filename socket — type a path and prefix directly, or connect a mesh/object/ material socket here to derive per-object names automatically.

Auto Sort Meshes

Sits between one or more mesh-input nodes and a Bake Pass, automatically pairing up target, source, and scene objects by matching parts of their names (or the collections they belong to). This is the “automated” alternative to manually wiring each Source/Scene object to each Target on a mesh-input node — see Auto Sort, Join & Explode, and Auto Cage for the full explanation of the identifier syntax, which is shared with the equivalent fields on the mesh-input nodes themselves.

  • Target / Source / Scene ID fields each take a search mode (Pass Through, Starts, Ends, Contains →, ← Contains) and an identifier string.

  • The case-sensitivity and match collections first toggles next to each field work the same way as on the mesh-input nodes.

  • Expand the node’s extra options to reveal Show Groupings, a live read-out of exactly which target/source/scene objects got paired together, useful for confirming your identifiers matched what you expected before baking.