Community Addon List

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

Hi,

I made a first attempt of building a overview-list of all (probably not) community addons.
I know there is http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.se/ already, but personally I prefer reading a short description rather trying to guess a functionality from animated gifs.
Coming from Softimage there is the best plugin-list site ever: http://www.rray.de/xsi/
I took it as inspiration (read: I shamelessly ripped the concept) and have a first version here:
http://thomasvolkmann.com/blenderaddons/
Before I start spending more time and tears on it I would like to know:

  • Does something like this exist already and I simply don’t know?
  • Are people interested that I continue with this (for myself I can probably live with a couple of bookmarks)

If the answers are “no” and “yes” (in that order) I would continue adding search, sort and filter functions and maybe other stuff that the mob might demand. I might even get a easier-to-remember domain at some point.

Questions/suggestions/ideas?

cheers

#2

there is a forum just for addons !

also there is a list of addons you can get from blender org which are not included
in normal builds !

happy bl

#3

hi,
In my sig you’ll find quite a large list of addons.

#4

Well actually i liked both links, and both have their pro and cons, i think the best would be to combine them to have text and gifs.
Both lack a bit of an index, it would be better to use an index, so one doenst need to wait for all gifs to load for example.
And also one wouldnt need to read all tekst before you get to that masking tool or coloring tool or camera tool.
Have you tried to contact the other web page, if you 2 work toghether i’m sure you both raise the level of quality.

#5

There is also this list: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts
I wrote the structure for the Wiki scripts catalog for Blender 2.49, then we ported to Blender 2.6.
It needs a rewrite, which I will do hopefully in the near future.
The idea behind the wiki catalog was to provide a single place for script writers to show there tools.
The wiki is the best place to describe & document your addon. The links don’t disappear after a year or two is one benefit.
My addons_extern catalog is a collection of addons old & new that still work. many I fix myself & often I use this as a platform to test addons & develop before adding to Blender. It is also the home of many ‘unmaintained or orphaned/lost scripts’ & a collection of ‘working scripts all in one place’ just as wiki should be ‘scripts directory’ all in one place.
What’s needed is man power to help. Help in:
Blender Official addons (Release Addons),
Blender Addons Contrib. (Addons developed in the Blender git environment with the goal of being included in Blender),
D/l snapshot of addons contrib here: http://git.blender.org/gitweb/gitweb.cgi/blender-addons-contrib.git/snapshot/HEAD.tar.gz
(Addons Contrib is also included in Blender buildbot builds here: https://builder.blender.org/download/ )
Addons Extern is not official, but a library of addons that get submitted to blender & not allowed, or forgotten about, or orphaned or useful tools & most of my working collection.

There’s help needed on many levels.
The wiki catalog should be the place for information & list of scripts. Much help is needed to improve it, but it’s a popular & very useful site, where links to information & addons can be maintained & have ‘everything in one place’ permanently.
Blender Addons Release needs more help, often Blender developers feel that Addons get written, approved, & the Author disappears & they are left to maintain all the addons. Indeed often I find myself fixing addons for Blender that I don’t use but know their use. Often I find myself bugging authors or dev’s, “Can you fix this?”, “What happened in the API this time?”
Blender Addons Contrib needs some major work. To clean it up & fix/remove addons, there is much help needed.

That said, there is also an awesome community of addons developers who help when they can & write great addons & documentation.
I would ask addons devs to use the system Blender has provided, scattering lists of links across the web, is difficult for users, the one place should be the wiki catelog, let’s improve that for a lasting & comprehensive guide to all that’s addons.

#6

I think the wiki is a good thing for modules that ship with Blender, but when it comes to community plugins it is very unlikely that the developers do a wiki-entry themselves. And while the addons are nicely categorized you have at least to do a mouseover to see what they do. Furthermore I would have a sort-by-date as a default, so everytime you come back there you see immediately if new stuff has been added…which is one of the main reason why I like the rray.de/xsi so much. You spend some time once exploring what is there, and after that you only need to take a look at the latest additions.
The addon-forum doesn’t work for me, because it is tedious to search through it.
I think I will just continue a little more and see if people like it.

#7

I added some functions.
Check it out and tell me what you think: http://thomasvolkmann.com/blenderaddons/
A super-compact index-view without images is coming next…stay tuned

You could also submit your favourite addons to save me some work :wink:

edit: man…heading straight towards 100 posts before my 10years blenderartist anniversary

#8

Realizing that I’m much too lazy to add all that stuff myself, I parsed some entries from blenderaddonlist to populate my site.
He has quite a nice collection. Maybe I should just convince him to have more compact view options (scrolling down a page just to see the first entry doesn’t help really). Also still images with animations only on mouseover would be nice, and of course short searchable text descriptions.