Go to Edit > Preferences then to the Add-ons tab. Click Install.

Choose the downloaded zip and click Install Add-on.

After the installation is complete it will show up in the add-on list. Enable the add-on by ticking the checkbox.

Add a new BakeGroup by pressing the + operator in the Bake Groups panel (N-Panel > Q-Baker tab). The BakeGroup is the starting point for the add-on.

Hold Shift while pressing + to create a bake group from the selected objects. Hold Ctrl to create a high-to-low bake group from the selection (objects are paired by _high/_low suffixes, and _cage objects are assigned automatically). Hold Alt to create one bake group per selected object.

Each BakeGroup can work in two modes: with High to Low disabled it bakes the listed objects directly; with it enabled, you add Groups containing high poly meshes, a low poly mesh, and optional cage settings.

Add maps to the bake group, then press the Bake operator. Baking runs in background Blender subprocesses with a progress slider and a cancel button.

Enable High to Low on the bake group, then add Groups. Hold Shift on the + button to build groups from selected objects by _high/_low/_cage suffixes, Ctrl to group the selection with the active object as low poly, or Alt to create one group per selected collection.

Each group holds High Poly meshes (multiple allowed) and a Low Poly mesh. The low poly object needs a UV map; high poly objects need materials.

Cage: enable Auto Cage to use an extrusion value, or assign a custom cage object. Ray Distance controls the maximum ray distance for the bake.

UV Map: use a global UV map for the whole bake group or a per-object UV map. The Add UVMap operator creates a new UV map when needed.

Add maps with the Add Map menu. Maps are grouped into PBR (Base Color, Emission, Glossiness, Metallic, Normal, Occlusion, Roughness, Specular), Mesh (Alpha, Bevel Normal, Cavity, Curvature, Displacement, Edge, Gradient, Height, Material ID, Thickness, Toon Shadow, Vector Displacement, Wireframe, XYZ), Principled BSDF (all BSDF inputs including subsurface, transmission, coat, sheen) and Cycles passes (AO, Combined, Diffuse, Environment, Glossy, Position, Shadow, Transmission, UV).

The Load Maps operator scans the materials of the listed objects and adds maps for every Principled BSDF input that is linked or changed from its default value.

Channel Pack maps combine up to four maps into a single texture (RGBA or RGB+A modes), with per-channel map selection in the R/G/B/A sub-panels.

Toggle Global in the Maps and Bake panel headers to share the map list and bake settings across all bake groups, or keep them per bake group. Map and bake settings can be saved as presets.

Each map has settings for Size (512 to 8K or custom width/height), Anti-Aliasing (up to 16x super-sampling), Format (PNG, JPEG, Targa, TIFF, OpenEXR, HDR, WebP) with color depth and codec options, and View Transform for the bake.

Normal maps support OpenGL/DirectX/Custom types, tangent/object space and per-channel swizzling. Margins can use adjacent faces or extend mode.

The Batch Name preference controls the output file naming with $name, $size and $type tokens. Auto UDIM creates UDIM textures automatically when the UV layout spans multiple tiles.

The Q-Baker tab in the Shader Editor adds a Material Bake panel: add materials to the list, add maps (same types as object baking) and bake them without adding objects to bake groups.

The Node Bake panel bakes the selected nodes into image textures. Hold Shift while clicking Bake to replace the linked sockets of the selected nodes with the baked textures. Shader and output nodes are not supported.

The Vertex Color panel (Edit Mode, or Object Mode when enabled in the preferences) provides a color swatch, a palette of preset colors and an Apply operator that paints the selected faces with the chosen color.

Batch Name default tokens, Auto UDIM, Remove Disabled Maps from the baked material, and .blend Location to use the .blend file directory as the default save location.

Cage settings: wireframe display, cage object color and the default cage extrusion for new groups. Vertex Color in object mode, and Factory Startup to launch bake subprocesses with a clean Blender startup.