what about the modeling module? i got the felling that its orphaned, just not announced oficially 
Didnāt it recently get like one of the biggest snapping upgrade in years 
?
https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.0/modeling/
4 Likes
and i thank germano for that
but still, things just randomly happen over there. no meetings, no roadmap no plans
modeling is still the backbone of 3d, it deserves more love 
modeling and sculpting should be an unified module
painting and texturing should be a separate module
imo
1 Like
I donāt think modeling has been ignored; the new node tools was done with modeling in mind. Iāve not personally seen a lot of new tools that are taking advantage of it, but itās still quite new and perhaps I also just havenāt seen them.
1 Like
yea like i said, things happen by chance over there. but the module itself feels dead
If Jenny doesnt bother updating addon, telling you that she updated it, and just keeps it for herself, why the fuck are you so adamant to chase that addon? 
Doubt shell bother with bug reports and integrating it with pipelines.
If Akim decided to keep addon for himself and doesnt share with people, are you gonna depend on that addon for your work?
One day same people complain how studios cant adapt Blender because manual update of studio tools is too much work and other dccs do it better and next day its a waste of time.
Platform strengthens the addon culture. Fosters better relationship with maintainers and users, instead of you chasing snippets of code on github that was never meant for you it provides you with addons that take your feedback, update to match Blender versions (so that you stop whinig about api breaks and addons being left behind). Gives studios tool to create repository for their scripts and distribution system for their employees, one more reason to use Blender. Same with educational institutions.
But Iāll make sure to tell Dalai that extensions platform will not make it because one blog post proposal three years ago didnt happen and Jenny cant be bothered to create json file.
3 Likes
The meeting notes tend to be full of smaller improvements and features to many areas of Blender that people tend to gloss over when the final release notes are read (so many do not actually notice until they use the tools like normal).
It is just that many of the big marquee features these days are related to Everything Nodes and rendering. I myself for instance have noticed a number of nice new touches to the interface that do not get much space in the notes.
Well. The ability to define the base point or to navigate while transforming, does not really revolutionize the modeling experience for people, who were fine with default snapping.
That is solving few critical cases. That is making the feature more intuitive and less frustrating.
But that is not a gain comparable to when snapping on faces was refactored in 3.3, undeniably improving Retopology process for everybody.
And Custom Base Point was a user request since 2.80.
So, that is rather an example in favor of a slow progress.
Since years, the modeling feature improved by development are Geometry nodes.
Node Tools are a great step forward.
But node operations to model are scattered between Geometry, Curves and Mesh nodes categories.
That is not obvious to build a node tool, when you are forced to make several conversions Mesh to Curve, Curve to mesh for simple stuff ; and when you are used to a lot more of operators in Mesh Edit mode that donāt exist as nodes.
A bundle of modeling tools nodetree assets would be welcomed.
UI to manage Vertex Groups has not been generalized to Edge/ Face Attributes used as Edge/Face Groups.
And new inputs for node tools are just 3D Cursor and selection.
But people would need mouse gestures, drawn strokes and widgets.
The base to a real change of paradigm in modeling process is not completely there, yet.
1 Like
Man, reading this thread is disheartening.
As both an addon user and developer; this is one of the biggest improvements to Blender that weāve had in a long time.
Currently, finding and installing a new addon is a small nightmare. You have to:
- Discover that the addon even exists (potentially the biggest hurdle)
- Find where the addon is hosted (usually Github)
- Github is notably a platform for developers, and the UI is famously terrible for ordinary users just trying to download software. I just want to download an addon, but I have to decide if I want to:
- download the repository as a zip with the big green button?
- Or should I find the hidden releases button and download the latest zip from there?
- But wait, thereās 3 zip files there, only one is the correct one, how do I know which?
- The addon is now downloaded, so I now can open blender, and install it from the preferences.
- These steps will also be different for every addon you come across, so get ready to troubleshoot.
- Repeat this every time you want to update an addon (but be sure to remove the old version first, otherwise the two will be merged and probably wonāt work).
With the new extensions platform:
- Search for the addon from within Blender, or on the website.
- Click the āinstallā button.
- Want to update? Click the āupdateā button.
Now, which of these will be more approachable for a new user? Or even an experience user?
Arguing that this is poor use of resources is frankly astonishing to me. Improving the experience of using addons directly improves all areas of Blender, for the cost of one. Want more modelling tools? Thereās an addon for that. Faster workflow with nodes? Thereās an addon. Easy way to manage HDRIs? Addon.
Addons will never be a replacement for native features, but ignoring them would be short-sighted and would harm Blender far more than it helped.
(Also to those saying it will be discontinued, is there any evidence for that?)
16 Likes
Sounds like a Bethesda game: letās not fix the game, just give the players easy access to addons that will fix the game for us.
Iām looking forward to finding the addon that enables vertex painting in multires, or the one that adds attribute interpolation into dyntopo.
1 Like
Yes because if Pablo and Dalai didnāt work on website overtime they would code multires support for vertex colors in HTML
3 Likes
Yeah, maybe they could go and fix Right Click Select so that it doesnāt log me out every 2 days and actually sends me notifications.
I wasnāt aware that Pablo and Dalaiās coding skills were limited to HTML.
Raul is currently at work fixing key issues with brushes along with other bugs (with a new patch today), but he will likely be in bugfix mode for a while before new functionality gets added (which is not a bad thing, vertex painting in multires would not be fun if the brush you need does not work right).
1 Like
Hear my controversial take guys:
If biggest improvements in terms of modeling is from addons, then extension platform would be actually an good modeling improvement for avg user.
Blender strong site is often pointed as having addons that fill gaps. Maybe not as good as competitors or specialized software (see meme below), but at least its something. So why wouldnāt BF leverage that side of blender community?
And because discoverability of addons is hard - best is this forum (lol), then Blendermarket (but thatās without free addons), then scattered random user recommendations.
So there is lack of that kind of addon catalogue.
And sole existance of it could improve user experience with relatively low cost. (Look at Unityās assetstore, bare Unity lack a ton of features that existed for long time in Unreal, but Unity is still very popular game engine despite everything whats happening around it)
Too dad that there wont be even listing to commercial addons, even just as links to blendermarket/gumroad/arstation.
Edit: Also there are Geometry Nodes: Where to find/share my random node that does that specific but relatively common thing? I have no idea. Its scattered all over the place.
3 Likes
Maybe I should reiterate this bit:
Addons are not being ignored, the python API is getting new stuff every release. I donāt see how making them easier to download will somehow make other areas of Blender better. The addons will be the same addons, they wonāt magically gain new capabilities.
3 Likes
Making addons more easily available will mean that more people will be able to discover, download and use them. As such, for those people Blender will be improved, in all areas that those addons affect.
1 Like
Iāve said a few countless times that Blender could highly improve the basic user experience if it actually shipped with some basic geonode presets - not those complicated over-the-top showstoppers on the Example downloads page, but just day-to-day useful quick geonode setups.
In reply, Iāve often heard āTheyāll be able to do this with Extensions.ā I donāt know why Extensions had to exist first, butā¦ whatever.
Ok, so Extensions is almost here. Letās hope it happens.
3 Likes
Thatās odd, I think the official messaging was always that Blender would ship with higher level geo nodes setups when they were at a suitable level of development (e.g. the new hair node groups)