Reloading Textures in Blender Is a Pain — I Made a Free Add-on for That

Ever been deep in a texturing workflow and hit this loop?

1. Edit your texture in Substance Painter (or Photoshop, or whatever)


2. Export


3. Switch back to Blender


4. Open the Shader Editor


5. Click the image node


6. Hunt for the "Reload" button in the properties


7. "Huh, it didn't update... oh right, there's another node"


8. Repeat

Blender doesn't put a reload button directly in the Shader Editor or 3D Viewport — you have to go through the Image Editor. That one extra detour adds up fast when you're iterating on textures.

So I made an add-on that puts it in the right-click menu.

Easy Texture Reload

A Blender add-on that adds texture reload commands to the right-click menu in the Shader Editor and 3D Viewport.

What it does

In the Shader Editor:

• Right-click a texture node → reload just that texture (multi-select works)


• Right-click empty space → reload all textures in the active material


• Right-click empty space → reload all textures in the entire scene

In the 3D Viewport:

• Right-click an object → reload all its textures (multi-select works)


• Right-click empty space → reload all textures in the entire scene

Material-wide and scene-wide reloads show a confirmation prompt to prevent accidental refreshes.

When it comes in handy

Substance Painter → Blender iteration

The classic back-and-forth. Right-click and reload without leaving your current context.

Photoshop or other external editors

Same idea — make a change, flip to Blender, right-click, done.

Game asset work

High-frequency texture updates are exactly what this is built for.

Install

Same as any Blender add-on:

1. Open Blender → Edit → Preferences → Add-ons


2. Click "Install..." in the top right


3. Select easy_texture_reload.py
   


4. Enable it with the checkbox

Works with Blender 5.0+. Supports Japanese and English (follows Blender's language setting).

Download (Free)

Available for free on Booth:

👉 https://epartworks.booth.pm/items/8332907

Wrapping up

I'm planning to keep building small add-ons for things that feel like they should be in Blender by default but aren't.

If this was useful, a follow would make my day 😊