The big favorite Blender add-ons thread

Elements?
I find the whole shebang inadmissible (special infos, shortcuts, buttons, all the little things… details which really help having a fluent flow) and IMO, should come ‘officially’ with Blender.
It became such natural part when using Blender that i just recently realized what i’m missing so much in 2.8 :smiley:

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hi did you wrote those addons ? you are listed as an addon creator is it true ? (this is a new system, it may have some flaws)

nice topic by the way, i added more addons to check in my list

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i love bezier mesh shaper, real grass, qblocker, and decalmachine.
batchops gotta be in there too.

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Of the paid ones, UV Packmaster, Boxcutter, GroupPro, SpeedSculpt and HardOps (in no particular order) are the ones I use most often.

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Haha, no, I haven’t developed a Blender add-on. I guess the title was auto-awarded to me because of this topic. :grin:

Last time I scripted an add-on was The V-Ray Automator for 3ds Max, about 15 years ago or so. :grin:

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Flexi Bezier Tools : one of my favourite addons. It features a number of utility ops and tools that far exceeds the default bezier curves tools of Blender.

  • Flexi Draw Bézier : to quickly create Bézier curves
  • Flexi Edit Bézier : to interactively edit curves in Object Mode (featuring: direct segment editing by dragging any point on curve, adding points at any position on segment, deleting segments / points and uniformly subdividing the segments)
  • Flexi Grease Bézier : to create Grease Pencil Bézier strokes

Matalogue : displays materials, lights and compositing trees in the toolbar of the Node Editor. Clicking on an item will switch the Node Editor to that material/lamp/compositing tree.


All Material List ($) : displays Material / Image / Light / Camera / World in a list and improves data management efficiency.


Context Select : Emulates Maya’s selections


Render Button & Camera Manager : adds a big render button in Properties and adds a panel in 3d view with options to manage cameras.


Mesh Check : checks for ngons, non-manifold, triangles, faces with more than 5 edges, isolated vertices, e poles, n poles…


UVPackMaster 2 Pro ($) : packs UV maps very quickly, with many options (heuristic search, locking overlapping islands, packing to other islands, island grouping, UDIM support, aligning islands of a similar shape, packing for a texture of any ratio and UV map validation).


TexTools : another addon to manage UV maps.


Proceduralize Nodes : helps create seamless textures


Blender Suspender / Blender Pause/UnPause : allows to suspend and resume Blender at any time, even in a middle of a rendering or baking process.


Gaffer : helps manage lights and HDRIs. You can also buy the addon here.


Modifier List : A different modifier stack manager for Blender 2.8x.


Editable Motion Trails 3D ($) : it is a 3D viewport editable motion trail, it allows you to author arcs in 3D world space. The 3D-controls are normal Blender objects, selectable and transformable through normal Blender means. As you modify the local channels, the 3D trail will also update in real time, even if the animation is playing. See also this link.

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Cool list, thanks a lot for sharing. :+1:

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Interestingly, my most-used external Blender add-ons list has completely changed since my initial post.

Here are the non-included, third-party Blender add-ons I can’t live without these days (in no particular order):

Modifier List

EZLattice Plus

EdgeFlow

QuadRemesher

Volume Preserving Smoothing

Mesh Fairing

There’s also another addon that I like a lot these days: PolyQuilt :

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It looks useful. Does it also allow you to create polygons on the surface of an existing (non-flat) mesh?

I added Mesh Fairing to my updated most-used add-ons list.

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Yes it can do that too (sorry, I misread your previous reply, missed your question).

imo, PolyQuilt deserves to be more known and used. It should even be in Blender by default.

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Thanks! I’m going to check out PolyQuilt.

For some reason I rarely see BPainter mentioned on this forum. I use it all the time and it’s really awesome.

Anything from this dude (still don’t know his name) is pure gold - Garment tool, Hair tool, Weight paint tools, anything he makes really…

Finally some hidden gems for people working with Maya in production - Clusters on steroids for Blender, as well as UV based vert copy.

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Yes, I’m a frequent user of @JoseConseco’s Volume Preserving Smoothing. I haven’t tried other add-ons he created yet.

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Check out his twitter if you haven’t already, I kinda became addicted. :slight_smile: I think I have all his addons, using many of them regularly.

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Are you on Twitter too? Here’s mine.

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Yup :slight_smile: Followed you already a while ago. I’m mostly just lurking around, set up a company on the side a while ago but haven’t started promo yet, I’m a bit slammed atm.

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If you ever touch the VSE this one is a must-have:
VSEQF is an overhaul for Blender’s VSE that can completely change your workflow. Designed for quick, mouse and keyboard balanced editing with a focus on real-time feedback.

Parenting(keep audio in sync):
https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF/raw/Blender_2_81/Manual/parenting.gif

Fades:
https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF/raw/Blender_2_81/Manual/fades.gif

Draw volume curve:
https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF/raw/Blender_2_81/Manual/drawfcurve.gif

3 point editing:
https://github.com/snuq/VSEQF/raw/Blender_2_81/Manual/3point.gif

And much more…

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Nice, thanks for the tip! I’m not very familiar with the VSE, but doesn’t this add-on overlap features of the Power Sequencer add-on that’s included with Blender?