We’re a small team of developers. While Blender isn’t the main focus of our development, we’re looking for one or two Blender coders to develop various addons. These addons will be offered to the public, hoping it can help to make Blender more intuitive for users.
We had already paid a coder for a Cavalier Perspective addon, which turned out to be a good experience. Here’s the next addon we hope to produce.
Smart/Master Modifier
The purpose of this addon is to have one master modifier for multiple objects, especially when the modifier settings are going to be the same for all objects.
Case Scenario #1
One good example is the subsurface modifier. It’s frequence to have each object attached to the subsurf modifier, and in general, they’re all set to the same amount of subdivision. But by default when the user want to increase the amount of subvision, every modifiers have to be tracked down one by one to perform the desired changes manually.
Case Scenario #2
Another good example, if not the most important, is the array modifier. It’s frequent that a dozen (or hundreds!) of small objects are used to shape up one big object. By default in Blender, having an array modifier added to each individual object quickly turns into a nightmare. You have to track down each single object if you want to change a value such as increasing the Count. So it’s a good reason to have one Master array modifier for all target objects.
Main Panel
Smart Modifier should have its own management panel with a list of existing entries. On this panel, it’s possible to create a new Smart Modifier entry. It should call a menu identical to the one when creating a normal modifier. It should be possible to link/subscribe objects to any of those smart modifier entries. Can be done with the current ways known to Blender such as drag&drop, eyedropping, or choosing object from a menu.
Subscription Method
There should be more than one way to assign an object to a Smart Modifier. Here are a few suggestions
1-) From the object’s regular modifier panel (if API allow UI changes). There should be an extra button below ‘Add Modifier’, which should be called ‘Add from Smart Modifier list’.
2-) From the main Smart Modifier panel (see description above).
3-) There should be a convenient way to assign object by their group, or children of a parent object.
Editing Smart Modifier
There are two ways to edit a smart modifier.
2-) Main Panel (see description above). It should be the most practical way to manage all Smart Modifier entries.
1-) Just like regular modifiers, smart modifiers should be listed in the object’s modifier stack. A special star icon should differentiate a smart modifier from a normal one. Changing the value of a smart modifier will be updated on all the object sharing this modifier.
This master/smart modifier should show up in the modifier stack of all the subscribed objects, as normal modifier normally do. A special icon (maybe a star) should indicate it’s a smart modifier. Changing the value of a smart modifier in either of the objects, should be reflected on all objects.
Conclusion
So, it’s a summary of what is expected for this addon. Such endeavor will require someone who’s experimented with Blender. It’s paid work. Feel free to PM me.
Advantage of using Smart Modifiers
- Make changes in one place rather than many.
- Can save a great deal of file memory, perhaps real-time performance.