autoConstraints is a Blender add-on designed to make working in 3D easier, faster and more intuitive.
It reduces the guesswork of working in the 3D viewport by automatically applying axis-constraints to a variety of 3D tools.
No need to manually apply constraints to every operation
No switching in and out of orthographic views
No clicking small parts of gizmos
Get the add-on
Constraints
Tools will be constrained to the most appropriate plane based on the viewing angle, or you can specify one.
Constraints can be still be overridden or cancelled interactively using default Blender methods, i.e. pressing axis keys, pressing ‘C’, or middle mouse dragging.
Easy to Learn
One toggle is all you need to use autoConstraints.
There are no complicated hotkeys or menus to learn.
An options dropdown gives you full control over constraints in a minimal, easy-to-understand interface.
Customizable UI
Choose between a compact or expanded toolbar and whether it appears in the viewport header, the tool header, or not at all. The add-on sidebar is optional
Thanks Matt Its been something I’ve wanted to make ever since I started switching to Blender 5 years ago!
Coming from other 3D software I missed the accuracy of gizmos but was falling in love with Blender’s gestural hotkey movement. This is my take on the best of both worlds
Update: I’ve released a free version of the add-on!
Before I got carried away and spent months adding features, tweaking options and polishing… I had planned to release this as a free add-on.
The free version contains all that was originally planned when development started (with the added stability of going through the process of making the paid version):
Move/tweak and rotate objects with automatic constraints
Constraints are based on the most appropriate plane based on the viewing angle
Constraints can be overridden/cancelled with the default constraint methods
Constraints can be toggled with an icon in the viewport tool header
Its literally the next thing I have planned!
More specifically:
Armature edit mode:
Move
Rotate
Duplicate
Extrude
Pose mode:
Move
Rotate
Am I forgetting a tool that you’d want to constraint in those contexts? I have done next to zero rigging or animation in Blender
Once I’ve implemented I think they are the last contexts that this add-on makes sense for (that I can think of anyway)
I’m really glad you got them to work! I think scale should work too? They’re all the same operators between modes which helps a lot!
I should have time in the next few days to finish up the first update with full hotkey support and duplicate/extrude
I’ll agree it is awkward telling those planes apart!
Colored icons might clash with the rest of Blender’s design and I want my add-ons to feel as native as possible…
I’ve come up with the following icons to try and help distinguish between planes, what do you think? (It’s harder than I expected making tiny icons like this! )
Progress has been a little slower than I’d like this month… But I do have a release candidate for 1.2 after some pretty big refactors. Headline features are:
New Icons, now with options after user feedback
Changing options in the UI will no longer add to undo steps. Options are still be saved and loaded with .blend files
Added support for grease pencil extrude tool
UI now uses context specific naming for “extrude vert/edge” for curves and armatures.
Multiple small QOL updates and minor bugfixes
Before publishing I’ve still got some testing to do and I’m going to update all the marketing materials/videos because of the new icons.
Let me know if you’d like to test this new release or have any feature requests you’d like to sneak in!
i’m not sure if it’s a bug on Poly spline types for curve, on 00:39 - 00:50 i can’t constraint when moving a single point but scaling and rotating it can be constrained.
so i’ll need minimum of 2 point for the constraint to be active when moving it.
Its been something I’ve wanted to make ever since I started switching to Blender 5 years ago!
