Kaleidoscope Add-on - A small package of nodes for Blender

Kaleidoscope add-on is a small package of nodes for Blender. These nodes allow you to make your scene more realistic and accurate to the real world.
The Spectrum Node is designed for providing you with infinite color palettes and manage them directly in Blender. It comes with a ton of rules to generate pleasing palettes. You can even publish your palettes so that users using the add-on can access them. There is even more features, which I have explained in the video.
The Intensity Node is a collection of pre-defined values that can be used to make your materials and lighting more accurate.
Both these nodes can be animated, and have built in syncing functionality to transfer all your saved palettes and values to another system automatically.

Kaleidoscope add-on is completely free to use. To support me in the development of this add-on you can donate while downloading.
Download link: http://blskl.cf/kaleidoscope
GitHub: https://github.com/blenderskool/kaleidoscope




4 Likes

The usefull thing. Thanks

Glad to know that you found it useful :slight_smile:

This is awesome! I am definitely going to try this out soon.
The name is also pretty clever as well.

Hope you like the add-on :wink:
Yeah, I wanted the name to completely match what it actually is!

Awesome ! Thanks !

Welcome :slight_smile:

I like the idea very much.
But IMHO it could be improved a bitā€¦

The UI could be simplifiedā€¦ I think it has too much options.
Another thing I would change is the output colorsā€¦ I personally would prefer to have just one color output, and add a factor input to choose which color to output (a bit as the ColorRamp node). This could help to output much more colors, even gradients, with a smaller and practical node.

And in the IOR node, I would (this is only a perfectionism :cool:) change the ā€˜Glass IORā€™ to just ā€˜IORā€™. I mean, ā€˜Glass IORā€™ and ā€˜Waterā€™ are a strange combination.
If you need some help, just ask. As I said, these are very usefull nodes, great job! :smiley:

Thanks for your suggestions :slight_smile:

I know the UI is a bit complicated, but I have simplified as much as I couldā€¦ used icons for some options as well. Will see if it can be improved more.
With one Color output and having gradients and stuff, the node would nearly become a ColorRamp node. And you can use the ColorRamp node with Spectrum as well. (It would be hard (or maybe impossible) to code a Gradient Controller like that)

Actually, I meant ā€˜Glass IORā€™ to be Glass Shader IOR valueā€¦ but I think I would make it ā€˜IORā€™ since IOR for different substances is a constant value. :wink:
Keep suggesting new ideas for improvements to this add-on :slight_smile:

Color Picker would allow you to sample colors from any image inside Blender, and use those colors in proportion in a ColorRamp. To try it out, the latest master branch of GitHub repo of this add-on can be downloaded.

1 Like

Seems like a great addon. I like the amount of options in the UI. However, I seem to be experiencing a small problems. I have the main palette node inside a group with multiple color outputs, which then hook into my various materials, so that I can control all my colors from one convenient group. When using it like this, hooking up the different outputs of the palette doesnā€™t seem to work. The color I get when I render is the color set in the Group Output Node, not the colors from the actual palette Iā€™ve generated with Kaleidoscope. Any ideas what could be causing this, and how to fix?

Since the Spectrum Node is global for every scene, you donā€™t need to have it in a node group to control all the colors. If Spectrum node in one material is updated, other Spectrum Nodes in different materials too are updated.
However, while trying it in a Node Group, I found out that add-on is not compatible with node groups currently. Probably I will try to add this feature in a future update.

Alright, thanks!

When one of the colors in the spectrum reaches red (when you change the hue) , it doesnā€™t shift further. I think in the code you have to put something like [in pseudocode: if color reaches 360, substract 360 ] . Nice addon. Is there a way we can add more colors per set?

Actually, that is a problem I am yet to fix in the add-on. It would take some time, and the issue is already there on GitHub. Probably I will try to fix it in the next update.
Unfortunately, now the add-on allows only 5 colors per set and there is no way to expand it.

Any plans for Blender 2.8 adaptation?

1 Like

Iā€™m interested too. Plsā€¦:slight_smile:

Kaleidoscope addon is now updated to version 1.1 with support for Blender 2.81 and above. :tada:
Hereā€™s a video highlighting the changes

The complete changelog can be found on the GitHub release page

The update can be downloaded from https://blenderskool.cf/kaleidoscope/

4 Likes

when are you going to launch: Color Picker?

you could include more relationships between colors ā€¦ is it possible?

you could also insert a gradual color mixer

thanks

Hi, Iā€™m not actively working on this addon now, so I cant say when and if those features will be added.

The addon is open source and if anyone wants to contribute to this, feel free to do so here.