Blender Add Ons

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

Hi.

In the past Blender came Bundled with a selection of scripts.
A scripts window & a scripts help browser & a menu with script category’s.

In Blender 2.5 this has dramatically changed.
Blender still comes with a selection of extra or bundled scripts.
These are called add ons.
To find these scripts in a recent build of Blender on Graphicall.
Go to User Preferences > Add ons
wow!
You now get to enable or disable scripts in the add-ons menu.
You can filter (browse) the scripts by category & choose the one’s you like or need.
You can add scripts to the add ons folder with the install script button.

This is great because it gives the user Choice.

For example, in the 3D View category, there’s the Spacebar menu.
Yep! It’s Back!
If you choose to enable it.

The Add On scripts that come with Blender are kept up to date with current Blender api.
The selection of scripts in add-ons are maintained by myself, ideasman & when possible,
the script authors themselves.
We follow the Blender release cycle & take pride in providing a decent variety of scripts.
In the near future i will be providing script bundles that include all the scripts not in the default selection.

This is a very good system.
If anyone has any questions, please ask here.

#2

Sorry for ot. But what is the status of the built in materials library? Also I
love the new addons list, but often wonder about their function. While the wiki links are a good start they often fall short on description. Thanks for the hard work guys.

#3

Yeah, the Add-on feature is great! Thanks.

I agree that it would be great to get more details about the add-on (a preview image would be perfect). There’s definitely a lot of unused space in the interface for more details. For too many of them you need to enable them and test them to get a good idea of what purpose they serve.

Maybe a link to a youtube video demonstrating the add-on would be a good idea, too. A “Blender Add-ons” youtube channel could be created to keep them organized. It would also help generate traffic/interest in Blender.

#4

It’s much better then in 2.49!
we can see the power of 2.5 and it’s great to work with theses

but still room for improvement

1 - Better doc
at the beginning of script there should be a summary on how and what it does

also may  be if needed   for some scripts a small PDF giving more details   and   for the more complex one a video that you can download  to better  explain  and give advanced features

2 - anything in near futur to have categories of scripts
like having several add ons folder that would help to keep related scripts together

happy 2.5

#5

Blender 2.49 export/import scripts will be converted to the new api ? Like java .m3g format?

#6

Thanks for explaining that. .there is a lot of talk about Add-ons but nobody really says how to access them.

#7

I’m pretty un-sure of the status of addons given the discussions on the mailing list and what I saw on IRC between you and Mindrones and Ideasman…

Though I didn’t see much!

Will talk friday on IRC…

I’m still not clear on what the criteria are to move from contrib to trunk…

Also, if you enable several addons and save default and have a custom interaction preset… it all seems to load in the wrong order and key shortcuts from the addons get overwritten by the interaction preset… Has that been fixed?

I can hack the behaviour by enabling my chosen addons in teh interaction preset py file, so they get loaded at the end…

#8

The add-on feature is great! but the method to handle the plugins have to be refined, in my opinion, it have to go for some thing like the outliner .

#9

:o I’m a typicall scripts allergical UI fanboy… For my very own and egoistic sake, i hope that all features will be understandable with one glance on a nice panel (like some kind of “constraints” or “modifier” sort of)… :rolleyes:

#10

My take on this: I would recommend two things :

(1) A one sentence description besides or under the add-on
(2) A small preview image

#11

Also, if you enable several addons and save default and have a custom interaction preset… it all seems to load in the wrong order and key shortcuts from the addons get overwritten by the interaction preset… Has that been fixed?

i’ll second that :slight_smile:

#12

One thing i was thinking is a ‘enable all’ and ‘disable all’ button to quickly toggle the addons on and off. :slight_smile:

Also this is offtopic i guess but with recent graphicall builds certain addons seem to have gone from the list. Like for example the import library, also i saw a video which had both a right click and space bar menu but for me i only get the spacebar menu. The import library’s obj importer always seemed to work but not the standard one though, so i am not sure if some of these are broken or i need to install additional stuff to make them run but i had some of these running with earlier builds.

#13

With all the addons that can already be bundled with Blender, you would risk enabling a bunch of stuff that you may barely use. (like some of the new objects you can add to the add object menu).

Better to have it just enable and disable all the addons you enabled in the menu instead, or have Blender remember which addons have been enabled so they are enabled when you open Blender again.

#14

hi all,
Thanks for all the responses.
Add-Ons is managed by Myself, Ideasman & Mindrones.
We welcome this kind of input to help us make the best system we can.
Brendon.

#15

Cube45: The scripts (which will be included/discluded) are still a bit unstable at the moment, that particular menu script went through several revisions and names turning out in the end to be the spacebar menu (although you can change this in the keymap if you want). Don’t be worried if a certain script disapears one revision because it might come back in the next one!

#16

Ok thanks for the information, i was thinking the menu might have been the same thing but was not sure. :slight_smile:

#17

It’s not exactly the same thing, but it was a continuation, which has gone through many mutations. :slight_smile:

#18

Why shouldn’t I just enable all adons? Do they use up system resources?

#19

not enough to notice!

It may make the UI cluttered as there’ll be new panels added here and there… and you may well find in teh future that this becomes a problem…

right now, probably OK…

Also, there may be cases where different addons use the same key shortcuts… and so will conflict

#20

Are there any convienient script combinations that one could recomend to acieve a certain function otherwise unavailable?