Is there a way to convert procedural textures to UV maps without rendering a final image first? I've often wanted to use procedural textures for UVs, but it seems that there is no simple way to do this from within the application. Is there some standard way to achieve this without first rendering a bunch of images and then stitching?
The only way to do this is to bake the render into an image.

Of course this requires you to first unwrap the mesh with non-overlapping coordinates ('Smart project' or 'Lightmap Pack' can help here to save doing it manually).

Note, this process could be automated through a script (probably someone has done this before, its not so hard to do for someone already familiar with our API).

For all selected objects:


Add UV layer
Unwrap.
Bake textures into the image.
Save each image to a name based on the object.