I created an add-on to make my life little bit easier when modeling in Blender, it takes away few clicks when aligning mesh objects origins, or aligning mesh objects to each others. I’m using it in my work, whenever I feel something is missing or not right I improved it.
Easy Align addon is developed in Blender 2.78, I tested it in 2.77, so far didn’t have any issues (UPDATE: amended to work in Blender 2.80, link available below, version 1.0.3).
Please check it out, tell me what you think, and if there are areas that can be improved, I’ll make a tutorial on using it, I made a tutorial to describe how it works, I’ll try to provide a better (and shorter) version of the tutorial later.
Many thanks to everyone that tested the addon for the feedback.
Not bad! It’s reminds me of a lighter weight version of Mesh Align Plus. Didn’t mess around with it too much, two recommendations though:
The “Set Origin \ Snap \ Selection” buttons down at the bottom were getting squashed together. I would recommend either giving the snap_items drop down it’s own row or shorten the options to something like ‘Grid’ or ‘To Grid’ instead of ‘Selection to Grid’.
My other recommendation would be adding some screenshots and possibly a GIF (try GifCam (windows), Kap (mac), or peek (linux)) to your main post if you want to get more people interested. Adding a screenshot below for now.
Thanks a lot for this plugin… though so simple is extremely useful, it transforms the simple aligning of objects to a totally intuitive act.
It would be of extreme helpfulness, also, in the case it had a ‘put selected in the center of the scene’ (in the center of the x,y,z axis of the working space) and a ‘put on the ground’ command which will put the selected objects on the scene grid.
Thank you for your feedback Fatesailor, I’m glad you find it useful.
Concerning your suggestions, there are lot’s of features that can be added, but I tried to keep it as simple as possible, I don’t want it to become a feature creep because it would become confusing to use, so in order to do what you suggested, I put the addon panel at the top of the properties shelf, so the Transform panel is just under it, the location will be accessible easily, I just align the origin of the object first, then enter the location input in the Transform X,Y,Z so the object will transform to that location with the origin at those coordinates. So please let me know if this is useful, if you still think that adding these features is necessary, I’ll give it a try. Μιά χαρά
Ευχαριστώ (thank you) for the quick answer Georgesd… I am a years long user of Wings 3D and I know how much useful is to have one click ‘put on the ground’ and ‘put on the center’ commands, they are great time savers despite their so big simplicity. They are commands that I use them very frequently. So, I would like to see them added in your so useful add on too. You can add them to the options panel as two independent buttons. It will be a breeze to use them and they will not make the plugin a feature creep in any way. But it is up to you of course… you are the author… : - )
Thank you Fatesailor, it’s always a pleasure to me to receive feedback and suggestions, I’ve been collecting some feedback in the past few days, here and on the youtube’s comment list, there are some changes that I’m planning to make to Easy Align in the future, I’ll add your suggestion to the ‘to do’ list, and try to make these amendments as soon as I can. Cheers!
It works fine George! Thanks a lot for this addon! It is great! So simple and so useful! Now everything is very easy… it puts to ground many selected objects also… so, it is a very easy way of aligning, in some way, too… : - )
You’re most welcome Fatesailor, glad it’s helping making things a bit easier, do you mind telling me what operating system you’re using, and what version of Blender?
Thank you for your reply Fatesailor, the reason I asked is that I didn’t have the chance to test it with a Mac and Linux systems, I don’t believe there should be any problems, but one never knows.