blender 3d decalmachine addon grease pencil drawing

A part of Blender's omnipotence is realized past add together-ons.

The Blender community is continuously creating new addons to make Blender more powerful.

Today, there are now hundreds (if non thousands) of incredibly useful addons available for about all workflows.

But which addons should you choose?

At CG Cookie, we employ addons daily. This guide is based on our experience and preferences.

The prices are up to appointment (last updated January 2021).
No affiliate links - we only recommend addons we use and love.

one. What are Blender addons and plugins?

Secondary scripts, called "Add-ons" extend Blender's functionality.
Source: Blender Manual

Basically, addons are third-party software which function inside Blender and expand its capabilities.

There is a pocket-size difference betwixt the meaning of "addon" and "plugin", though they are often used interchangeably.

2. How do I install addons?

You will find the addons section in Blender's Preferences. Activate an addon by enabling its checkmark.

Source: Blender Manual

To install 3rd political party addons, hitting the Install... button and add together the file.

Blender Manual has detailed instructions on using addons.

3. Practise I demand to use addons?

Not at all!

If you lot're brand new to Blender, we recommend getting your feet wet without the use of addons. (For total Blender beginners, bank check out our free course on how to build and animate a rocket in Blender.)

A note about modeling addons specifically...

While addons tin can brand you a faster modeler, they won't brand yous a amend modeler.

There'due south no mode around it - at some point, you need to really master the fundamentals of topology.

Recommended: Mesh Modeling Fundamentals

Learning modeling in Blender? This course will accept you through mesh modeling workflows and useful tools. Included is a mini-project for practise, plus a modeling exercise. Watch the trailer.

4. Why should I pay for addons?

Blender is free, which can brand information technology feel counterintuitive to pay for addons.

But keep in mind that addons are made past independent creators who invest their fourth dimension into development.

Purchasing an addon means you are supporting these Blender enthusiasts.

Plus - many addons sold on Blender Market give a portion of the gain to the Blender Foundation:

So if y'all encounter a heart ❤️ graphic on a product, you know that a portion of those sales are going back to the Blender Foundation. Each Creator on the site has an opportunity to donate a portion or all of their sales back into the Blender eco-system.
Source: Blender Marketplace

As of 2021, Blender Market place has donated nearly $200,000 to the Blender Development Fund:

In curt, ownership Blender addons makes Blender meliorate for everybody.

And if that doesn't piece of work for you, there are tons of free addons to choose from as well.

So - which ones are the best? Let'southward dive in!

five. Best MODELING ADDONS

Pin Transform (from $13.84 on Blender Market)

This is one of those little things that seems like information technology should just exist part of Blender by default.

Pivot Transform is tucked neatly into the pivot point popover and when you plough it on yous tin can move an object's origin around without moving the object itself. You tin even use snapping.

Remember a couple courses ago where I do this by going into edit mode and it took me virtually a minute to get the origin in the right spot?

This could have made that take about five seconds. What'south too not bad is that moving the origin won't mess up the location of any kid objects, which is otherwise a massive headache. Rotations are a different story though, because dealing with those is a whole lot more than complicated. It also zeros out your location data, so practise tread carefully if you've already animated your object.

By-Gen ($i on Blender Market)

If you liked the Generative Modeling lessons with Midge Sinnaeve, you're going to like this generative modeling addon by Curtis Holt.

Past-Gen allows you to chop-chop apply cool styles to your mesh so that you can model pretty basic things yet end upwards with a neat modernistic geometric look.

It's creating displacement textures and adding a whole agglomeration of modifiers for you, which is null that y'all couldn't do already, but it saves you a lot of time if you use these kinds of styles often.

To exist totally honest I didn't go into this addon expecting a whole lot, but after trying the hard surface skin way I immediately got sucked into modeling random things and had a blast. For a whopping price tag of $1, information technology's definitely worth a shot.

Loop Tools ($0 - included in Blender)

Dorsum earlier Blender had so many great mesh tools built in, loop tools was the only way to become some important stuff done.

Now information technology'south not as much of an essential, simply operators like making whatever number of edges into a circle, making sloppy loops into a perfect curve, flattening things at strange angles, etc., come in handy all the fourth dimension! Information technology'southward included in Blender, so take 10 seconds and turn it on if you haven't already.

WMesh ($0 - free on Gumroad)

WMesh brings 3ds Max style non-subversive parametric primitives to your Blender modeling and animation toolset.

In other words: unlike Blender's own primitive objects, a WMesh object's properties tin still be adjusted afterward moving, rotating, and/or scaling it, and even afterward reloading your scene.

WMesh object parameters remain adjustable as long equally you don't perform edits in Edit Mode.

Next to offering more parameters than comparable native Blender primitives (due east.yard. the ability to modify the corporeality of X, Y and Z edge loops in a cube) WMesh objects can as well be animated.

This becomes actually powerful if you add together 1 or more modifiers to WMesh objects, such every bit Boolean modifiers.

Mira Tools ($0 - free on GitHub)

This set of tools has been around since 2015, but I never heard of it until Jerry Perkins a.m.a MasterXeon1001 the creator of HardOps, mentioned on our live stream that it's one of his favorites but was no longer being developed. Well, it's dorsum with new features in ii.viii!

Mira Tools is a prepare of retopology and mesh deforming operators that tin exist pretty helpful. Bluntly I more often than not cease up using Mesh Machine or Retopoflow instead of Mira Tools for the retopology and bevel stuff, but the Curve Deform and Curve Stretch operators are pretty unique and super fun to use.

For the few occasions where information technology doesn't quite work how I want, another addon, Bezier Mesh Shaper, fills in the gaps since information technology can influence a larger area with a controlled falloff. I'd highly recommend both of them!

EZLattice (free or $11 on Blender Market)

Lattice deformation (also known as Fast Fourier Deformation) is a powerful and flexible tool to speedily reshape 1 or multiple objects. Realizing lattice deformation in Blender is a hassle though.

You need to manually create a Lattice object, adjust its settings, move it, calibration it, add together a Lattice modifier to 1 or more objects, assign the Lattice, etcetera.

EZLattice eases the process of Lattice deformation in Blender a lot.

You just select 1 or more than objects, activate the addition, and voilá, a fitting lattice is added and ready to be manipulated. Lattice preset settings can be saved in the add-on preferences, and you can cull betwixt a limited free version of EZLattice and a more powerful paid version.

We recommend the paid 'Plus' version if you lot've got the budget. It offers very useful extra functionality like Lattice-deforming an Edit Mode selection.

• EZLattice Free

• EZLattice Plus

Edge Menstruation ($0 - free on GitHub)

This pop 3DS Max and Maya tool has made its way over to Blender!

Edge Period uses spline interpolation to arrange edge loops to fit the surrounding geometry. You tin apply it to speedily clean upward messy topology or ameliorate blend between two areas. Information technology's two operators Ready Catamenia and Gear up Linear come in handy pretty ofttimes, and they're conveniently added to the edges context menu. It's gratuitous, uncomplicated, and adds operations that just didn't exist in Blender before. I'll definitely exist using information technology a lot!

BoxCutter ($20 on Blender Market)

If you like to make things using booleans, BoxCutter is going to exist your all-time friend. It makes the wearisome procedure of creating meshes to cutting out shapes much more intuitive and artist friendly by allowing you to depict them straight in the viewport. It'south buttery shine and there are a ton of options from cartoon complex shapes with bevels to insetting the mesh or even creating new boxes from scratch. You can also utilize all kinds of meshes as a source for slicing and dicing, so y'all're definitely not express to cutting only boxes.

The addon Fluent also has some of these features and includes a snapping grid for precision, so check that out if yous want an alternative.

Smart Fill ($3 on Gumroad)

F2 is a great addon that'south been around for forever and is included in Blender. It makes Blender's F hotkey a bit smarter past knowing which faces you are intending to fill and jumping right to them.

Smart Fill is a new favorite addon of mine which is similar F2 on steroids. It's pretty simple - it merely adds things like grid fill and bridge edge loops to the mix when you need them. Since these deportment are so common, having access to all of them by merely hitting F is a fantastic time saver.

HardOps ($20 on Blender Market)

Possibly the most well-known Blender addon to date, HardOps saves you clicks by joining mutual combinations of modeling tasks into simple operations. If you find yourself mark edges as sharp, adjusting modifiers, or kitbashing with Booleans pretty often, this addon volition feel similar it was congenital just for you.

As the name implies, it was adult with hard surface modeling in mind, only because things like arrays, mirroring, and setting custom normals are useful for most projects, it's great to accept on all the fourth dimension.

If yous like the idea of HardOps but are looking for something a trivial different, endeavor Speedflow for modifiers and not-destructive workflows, and Water ice Tools Pro or Fluent for more Boolean and hard surface detailing goodness.

MESHmachine ($twoscore on Blender Market)

Subtitled "The Missing Essentials", MESHmachine is a crucial time-saver for anyone doing serious modeling work.

The large feature that got me into information technology initially is that information technology takes the really subversive edit mode bevels and makes them hands editable.

Besides the amazing bevel operations though, MESHmachine also fixes geometry and normals on notoriously challenging areas such as curved surfaces, awkward angles, or faces surrounding Booleans. There'south too a new characteristic chosen Plugs which lets you insert really cool mesh details without the mess that normally comes with Boolean operations.

If yous do hard surface modeling or whatever sort of modeling for games, MESHmachine is a must-have.

six. BEST SCULPTING ADDONS

Speedsculpt ($twenty on Blender Market)

When information technology comes to Sculpt Fashion add-ons, Speedsculpt is my large favorite.

Speedsculpt offers an impressively comprehensive toolset to supercharge your sculpting experiences, such as Voxel Remesh enhancements (including automatic surface smoothing), easy cutting and slicing tools, powerful object creation tools similar the Draw Skin tool, and much more.

Speedsculpt is not a gratuitous add-on, but it's very affordable and well worth the investment if you spend a lot of time in Blender Sculpt Style.

Also, Speedsculpt has received a significant upgrade this Summer, making information technology even better than it already was.

If you lot want to compare this to a related addon, Sculpt Toolkit, check out the video Kent made most it last yr. If you sculpt often, information technology'south definitely worth grabbing ane or the other.

💡 If you lot buy SpeedSculpt, EZLattice will not exist necessary, equally a similar Lattice tool is part of SpeedSculpt.

Sculpt / Paint / Edit Workflow Suite ($0 - free)

The Sculpt / Paint / Edit Workflow suite is a collection of useful, small-scale, complimentary add-ons to speed up certain sculpting and/or painting tasks.

The add-ons were already published in 2012, but they were updated to work with Blender 2.8+, and some of them are even so very useful.

My favorite add together-on of the collection is Brush Quickset, which allows you to agree the right mouse button and drag to quickly resize your castor by dragging vertically or change its strength past dragging horizontally.

This is a real time-saver.

And then there's the Brush Select By Proper name add together-on, which enables you to cycle between multiple brushes by repeating the same keyboard key.

This is a very convenient manner of selecting brushes without having to assign them to all kinds of oft already reserved keys.

Yous tin can group similar brushes under ane fundamental, for example press 'Chiliad' ane time for Take hold of, press it twice for Rubberband Deform, and a third time for Snake Hook.

Reset Sculpt Brushes ($0 - gratis on GitHub)

You can already reset a unmarried Sculpt Manner brush, simply Reset Sculpt Brushes is a small-scale, complimentary add-on that allows yous to reset all Sculpt Manner brushes at one time. This tin can come in handy when you've changed settings in several brushes, and want to return to the brush defaults.

To use the add-on after installation, click on the push with the arrow icon adjacent to the Castor preview image in the Agile Tool Settings tab, and choose Reset All Brushes.

The Reset Sculpt Brushes add-on is peculiarly useful if you lot regularly update your Blender version to alpha and beta versions.

As default Sculpt Mode brush settings are oft altered during development, a reset is often necessary for the proper functioning of brushes as intended by the developers.

To automate this, the Reset Sculpt Brushes improver offers multiple preferences to reset brushes at Blender startup or when a Blender scene file is opened.

Mesh Fairing ($0 - costless on GitHub)

Mesh Fairing is a fairly obscure gem of an add-on offering very powerful expanse smoothing methods. It works with Edit Fashion selections as well as Sculpt Manner masks.

Later on installing the improver, the Sculpt drop-downward carte volition incorporate a Fair Vertices choice. You tin add the part to your Quick Favorites menu for like shooting fish in a barrel admission.

Mask an area of your object (smoothing the mask is usually not necessary) and activate Fair Vertices to get a card with three options: Position, Tangency and Curvature. Position gives the flattest class of smoothing, Curvature tries to fully take the curvature of the surrounding surface into account, and Tangency works somewhere in between the other two methods.

Different scenarios require dissimilar methods. You'll have to try which method works best in each example.

Because the Mesh Fairing addition uses fairly complex algorithms and is dependent on Python, it tin can be a bit irksome when you lot're working with dense, high-polygon meshes.

Mesh Fairing offers a simple single-push button preference to install the SciPy library for ameliorate functioning and more stability.

Recommended: Fundamentals of Digital Sculpting

This tutorial grade will lay the foundation of using Blender'due south sculpt manner, applying that cognition to sculpt a shark creature, then that y'all so sculpt anything you want. Watch the trailer.

Pie Menu Editor (PME) ($16 on Blender Market)

Pie Carte du jour Editor is one of the Blender add-ons I actually couldn't live without anymore.

Although Blender comes with the Quick Favorites carte du jour since the introduction of version 2.8, at the time of writing information technology is not configurable also calculation or deleting entries in a stacked menu.

Pie Carte Editor (PME) is very affordable and volition ease your workflow a lot if you take some time to configure your own personalized custom menus with information technology.

PME is amazingly versatile, information technology allows y'all to create custom pie menus, regular menus, popular-upward dialogs, macro operations, floating panels, assign custom icons to menu entries and much more.

I'm using PME for several custom pie menus, assigned to different Blender modes. For example, I've got split up custom menus for Edit Manner, Sculpt Way brushes and Sculpt Manner tools, assigned to keyboard keys for piece of cake access.

Sculpt Toolkit ($fifteen on Blender Market place)

Although a number of its tools take been replaced past native Sculpt Mode tools in the latest Blender versions, the affordable Sculpt Toolkit add together-on still offers some interesting additions to your sculpting tools.

Among the nearly notable Sculpt Toolkit features is the possibility to choose from a number of base mesh presets which are constructed from Blender basic. For example, you can add a muscular male figure, pose and adapt information technology to your liking, and accept Sculpt Toolkit generate a sculpt-able mesh from the armature.

Blender Atelier: Sculpt ($24 on Blender Market place)

Blender Atelier: Sculpt probably offers the most comprehensive expansion of Sculpt Mode that's available.

The addition even partially transforms the Sculpt Mode interface, although you tin switch this off in the add-on preferences if you like.

Blender Atelier: Sculpt is so versatile, I don't even know where to outset, but among its highlights are: Dyntopo workflow improvements, brush sets (favorites, by type, contempo), closing of gaps, projection of meshes on your current mesh, and adding primitives on the surface of your mesh.

Another groovy tool is the Sculpt Notes tool, which allows you to draw a mesh across the surface of your current mesh, with options to dispense the path, adjust the cantankerous-section shape and more. Actually powerful.

Accept a look at the Blender Atelier: Sculpt documentation for much more info and demonstration videos. It tin can be found in the Blender Market product page,

vii. All-time ANIMATION AND RIGGING ADDONS

Making one or two things move in Blender is pretty easy, but if you've ever needed to make more complex effects, things can sometimes get messy or, in some cases, downright impossible.

Recently we've discovered these Blender addons that we think yous'll enjoy, which can assistance brand rigging and animation in Blender a bit easier.

SpriteHandler ($10 on Blender Market)

When yous think of animating in a 3D software, you lot probably don't remember of pixel art and sprite sheets. If you're into making games though, there are definitely times where you lot'll need to cross that carve up between 3D and 2nd. In that location are a few sprite related addons out there, and I'm always attracted by fun names like Get Sheet Done, but the best and most fully featured one I can find is called SpriteHandler.

SpriteHandler makes it extremely easy to import and play any sprite sail.

Just add together information technology as an object, gear up the Ten and Y grid numbers, adjust the timing, and you're good to get. If you fix the shader to diffuse and the transparency type to Blastoff Clip, y'all can fifty-fifty have your animated sprites interact with lights, shadows, and other objects!

You tin can also use sprite sheets to randomize a material per object, catechumen a sprite sheet to mesh objects (it creates a mesh that's in the shape of the sprite, not only a aeroplane), and of course render out any animation as a sprite sheet you can apply in Unity, Unreal, or elsewhere.

Cool, right? It's a bit niche, so not everyone volition need this, but if you lot practise it'll save you quite a lot of time.

Text FX ($0 - free)

One of the areas where Blender can be said to be a little bit backside is movement graphics, in particular when working with Text objects.

The addon Text FX makes animating text a breeze and adds quick controls for effects that you're likely to want to apply.

You tin animate numbers counting up or downwardly, make a timer, a typewriter printout, or that cool matrix style scramble effect.

There'due south likewise an addon called Text Effects, which is an entirely different addon that can't do those effects simply can do intro manner transforms actually well. I'd recommend checking out both.

Recommended: Animating Games in Blender

Learn how to breathing all the actions needed for a first-person shooter game, from continuing to complex actions: reloading and transforming the rifle into a cool sniper. Watch the trailer.

Wiggle Bones ($0 - free)

Follow-through is a pretty of import concept in animation. Near of the time your objects should respect inertia, but it tin can get pretty slow to keyframe all those secondary and tertiary bones if you lot really only care nearly one of them and the residuum merely demand to react believably enough.

Wiggle bones is a small addon by Shteve that makes any os jiggle effectually based on it's motility or rotation.

You can even chain jerk bones together! There is some weirdness here and there as Blender's dependency graph is non an piece of cake thing to mess with, but overall it's fast, like shooting fish in a barrel, and super unobtrusive when yous're not using it.

Yous can as well check out Jiggle Bone, which was the original implementation past Simón Flores that now also works with 2.viii. Another alternative is Bound Bone by Artell. Information technology looks similar it's withal in early on development, merely it has collisions with other bones, which is extremely absurd!

💡Learn how to utilise Wiggle Bones in action: create a spooky blithe spider .

AnimAll ($0 - included in Blender)

You lot can breathing just about any holding in Blender from modifiers to render samples and fifty-fifty node values. There are but a couple things that you can't animate which, if y'all could, would make creating certain cool effects a lot easier.

AnimAll is a really erstwhile addon by Daniel Salazar that lets yous animate some interesting things. For instance, vertices! Just select some vertices, insert an AnimAll keyframe, go forward a few frames, motility them somewhere else, and insert another keyframe. Simply like that, you lot've animated your mesh without using whatever shapekeys. Y'all can also breathing bevel weights, creases, vertex colors, vertex groups, shape key vertices, and, my personal favorite, UV'southward. Animating your UV's can help yous make lots of crawly effects like flowing lava or switching between 2D facial expressions.

AnimAll is included in Blender, so all you need to do is bank check it on and it'll be in that location when you need it!

Ten-Musculus Organization (from $34.97 on Blender Market)

Take you always seen those fancy animation breakdowns where they show the beefcake of a character or fauna and it's and so detailed that you tin can run across muscles moving? For bones stuff you can apply cosmetic shape keys to get a similar effect, but for rigs that need lots of detail and total flexibility in whatever direction, you tin now employ muscles thanks to Ten-Muscle Arrangement.

The way it works is pretty elementary.

Select two bones, create a muscle that binds one end to each of them, and then tweak the parameters to your liking.

There's a lot you tin can practice here, from customizing the shape of the muscle in edit mode to pinning it to different parts of your armature. You can brand any type of muscle you can think of, including jiggly ones and ones that deform along with the bones. Once you lot employ the muscle organization to the pare of your graphic symbol, the skin deforms properly every bit the muscles slide, squash, and stretch underneath.

Recommended: Fundamentals of Animation

We'll beginning with the basics and work our way up to animating a simple scene. From frame rates to graph editor and a bouncing ball animation, yous volition master the essentials in no fourth dimension. Sentry the trailer.

Animaide ($0 - free on GitHub)

There are a yard tools for moving vertices in Blender in all different sorts of ways, but non that many tools for moving our other favorite points in space - keyframes!

Well, the addon AnimAide past Ares Deveaux brings some of those clever concepts to the graph editor. After installing the addon you can utilize these sliders in the graph editor to ease your keyframes between two points in 14 different, incredibly helpful, means. There are also hotkeys and pie menus if you really want to get serious with it.

In that location's also a 2nd panel chosen Anim Transform which lets yous move your object in the 3D view and all of the curves will shift over appropriately and then you tin play the aforementioned animation in a different spot. That is magic.

Yous can tell it's made by animators for animators because there's no extra fluff and no gimmicks - just a scattering of well thought through features that work every time.

Dynamic Parent ($0 - gratis on GitHub)

There are very few things that I found more frustrating when starting to animate than switching between parents. It seems elementary enough to have a grapheme pick upwardly an object and laissez passer information technology off to another graphic symbol.

But even that can turn into a headache.

It does take a few clicks to set the constraints, but if you happen to click Set Changed or Clear Inverse at the wrong point in the process, you can hopelessly lost trying to get information technology back into place.

Information technology's worth doing that a couple of times then y'all can empathize what'south going on behind the scenes, simply afterwards that learning period, install the Dynamic Parent addon by Roman Volodin and just click when yous desire an object to switch parents. It'south super unproblematic and it works well.

The one quirk in the 2.8 port is that it appears under the toolbar, not the sidebar.

But if you scroll down one post in the BlenderArtists thread, I posted how to go it into the right spot. It's simply changing ii lines of text and so you'll be golden.

Machine-Rig Pro (from $19.fifty on Blender Market)

Rigging is tough, and making a consummate character or creature rig that works well is non easy and takes quite a lot of fourth dimension. Auto-Rig Pro promises to make that task much more simple.

It has a smart rig feature which motorcar-detects the correct placement of basic based on placing just a few little circles on the shoulders, neck, ankles, etc. It'southward pretty intuitive and yous tin do it all in front of orthographic view since information technology calculates the right book depth for you.

Information technology besides motorcar-detects fingers and rigs those with the right rotations and everything, then all you need to do is put the circle on the wrist.

Of grade, no auto-rigging organisation is perfect so you'll probable need to do some transmission weight paint adjustments, but for any normal character, it's pretty minimal.

One absurd bonus characteristic is that it tin can generate a bone picker map, so you can select the correct bone if things are getting crazy in the 3D View.

Ane matter I really appreciate well-nigh this addon is that Artell, the developer, has fabricated sure that it works well with other addons and goes out of his way to encourage his users to support those other developers every bit well.

For case, it works manus in paw with X-Muscle System, Voxel Rut Diffuse Skinning, which by the way is also awesome and worth checking out (I mean, if the name voxel heat diffuse skinning doesn't make your Blendy senses tingle I don't know what volition), 10-Pose Picker, and more than.

You might wonder if it'south worth purchasing if Rigify, another auto rigging addon, is gratis and included in Blender.

Despite having that gratuitous alternative though, Automobile-Rig Pro holds the title for the #1 best selling addon on the Blender Market and nevertheless holds a five star rating, then there'southward definitely a need for a more advanced solution. Automobile-Rig Pro seems to striking the smash on the head for most users. If you rig a lot of characters, it's definitely worth checking out.

Os Layer Manager ($0 on Gumroad)

Do you remember how Blender layers used to be a grid with dots, and and then when we switched to collections everything made a lot more intuitive sense? Well, rigs and rigid bodies are the last things to withal use that old organisation. That means that unless you created a rig from scratch yourself, and sometimes fifty-fifty then, you might completely forget what bones are on what layers. It can exist a total crapshoot to try to find what you're looking for.

Bone Layer Manager comes in to save the day here and lets you lot assign names to your bone layers. It also gives you an intuitive sidebar UI for adjusting rig properties and messing with constraints. Now, you can put all your face up bones on a confront layer, IK arm control basic on an Arms IK layer, helper bones on a helpers layer, etc., and yous'll never have to estimate what'south where.

Animation Nodes ($0 - costless)

In that location are quite a few crawly rigging and blitheness addons out there, so it was tough to narrow it downwards this list to simply 10. Simply every bit far as I know, the #1 in this category wins past a landslide. If y'all oasis't guessed it already, that would exist Animation Nodes by Jacques Luke.

Procedural creation is the future, we're all aware of that, and just check out our Nodevember video with Simon Thommes about procedural shaders if you lot want to see what insane things are possible when you allow people plug stuff into other stuff and do math in betwixt. Instead of colors and textures though, Animation nodes lets y'all command objects, vertices, text, audio, and even time itself. Effects that were just not possible to exercise in Blender before are now relatively quick to create!

If you're more than into modeling then motion graphics though, I'd recommend checking out a related addon called Sverchok Nodes.

For node-based rigging, bank check out the ongoing development of a tool called Ghost IK which looks very interesting so far. Move Tool should also get a shoutout hither since it does node-based motility graphics as well just can be a bit easier to utilize than animation nodes. With less complexity comes less freedom though, and then whether yous'd want to try information technology or not depends on the project.

To go on the node hype, The Blender team has already announced their Everything Nodes project, led by none other than Jacques Luke himself. While I highly recommend Animation Nodes, I'm even more excited virtually the features coming to Blender official subsequently on that might brand this addon irrelevant. Who knows how long that will take though, so grab a free copy of Animation Nodes in the meantime and let me know what you lot make.

viii. Best SHADING AND TEXTURING ADDONS

UV Pack Principal ($0 - gratuitous on Gumroad)

This addon has saved us quite a few hours of work, and it'southward useful on just almost every project. Whether it's characters or hard surface stuff, paw-painted or generally procedural, you almost e'er accept to pack UV's.

I try non to use addons when I record tutorials and so that anybody can follow along, and and then I in one case packed three hard surface game weapons into 1 map by manus and it was… a little painful.

UV Pack Primary Pro would take fabricated that whole procedure an absolute breeze.

Blender's pack - decent, only no mirrored UV'due south and actress wasted infinite

UV Pack Master - mirrored UV's and concave shapes

Its packing algorithm supports concave shapes instead of just bounding boxes, so information technology's better than Blender'due south default by far. Information technology'southward also pretty fast thanks to multithreading.

What really makes it work for me though is the fact that y'all tin can lock overlapping islands together. In most models, you want to mirror some UV's to save texture space merely leave central pieces unmirrored and so that information technology however looks asymmetrical. By locking overlapping islands, y'all can pack your mirrored pieces and unmirrored pieces all at the same time!

Amidst other features, you tin can fix a pixel margin size, which is fantastic. Other packing methods usually employ a percentage based margin, and good luck converting that to pixels to get it to exactly the right size.

The pack still leaves empty space around the edges sometimes so there is room for improvement, but am I going to be lazy and have "pretty adept" instead of "perfect"? If it saves me hours of work, you bet I volition!

Recommended: Blender Materials and Shading

In this Blender course, learn how to create materials and shaders. Whether you're going for a stylized or realistic look, this forty-lesson course with a do Blender exercise will teach you how to do it. Watch the trailer.

Actress Image List ($0 - gratis on GitHub)

Have y'all e'er had to scroll through a really long listing of textures with tiny thumbnails in the image editor to selection the correct one?

Well, Actress Prototype List makes finding textures a much easier feel past giving you a persistent list in the sidebar, bigger thumbnails, and a large thumbnail search view.

You lot tin also quickly run across which textures are saved with a false user and which are packed right into the file, also as rapidly delete unused images. It's free on GitHub, so give it a try and encounter if it helps speed things upward for you.

Import Images equally Planes ($0 - included in Blender)

Information technology'due south as uncomplicated as it sounds! This groovy Blender addon lets you import an epitome as a mesh airplane with the right dimensions and texture automatically applied.

Yous tin edit the material options on import to utilise the image blastoff equally transparency, animate through an image sequence, ready accented dimensions, and annihilation else you'd probable want to do with an image on a plane.

There'due south actually not a lot to it, but - boy, does it come in handy! It'south bundled right into Blender, so all you demand to do is check it on and salve those settings.

NodeCustomBuilder ($4 on Blender Marketplace)

Not simply does this addon's championship pack three words into one (and then you lot know it ways business), NodeCustomBuilder too saves as many nodes as yous want into ane click.

It'due south like a library for node setups!

This addon is very simple to use, unobtrusive when you're non using it and does exactly what it says it does. It even works between .blend files!

Extreme PBR (from $39 on Blender Market)

One of the hardest parts of texturing is...finding the textures in the starting time place!

When you have to separate out albedo, roughness, normal, and metalness maps, the challenge gets even harder. And that'southward not to mention the time it takes to plug all those texture nodes in.

Farthermost PBR has been one of the top-selling addons on the Blender Market for months at present, and for a good reason.

It comes with over 1,000 surprisingly good materials and information technology'due south easy to add together your own.

The controls in the sidebar console permit you to easily switch out materials, set and manipulate UV's, edit the cloth properties, add together displacement, and practise pretty much everything else you'd need to do to speedily texture a scene.

Rapid PBR Material Creator ($ten on Blender Marketplace)

Sometimes, tileable textures only won't exercise the trick and you need to customize them yourself using Substance, Quixel, or Photoshop. Creating and setting upwards materials with your custom textures isn't difficult, simply it does take a few steps that may too be automated.

That's where Rapid PBR Material Creator comes in.

But point information technology at a folder and create your material with 1 click. You lot can also update all materials in one click if yous've made changes in another program and desire to see that reflected in Blender.

I do wish information technology was smart enough to make multiple materials out of a binder with multiple PBR texture sets, as having everything in dissever folders does have some extra organization, just as it is it works great (especially at the price of $10) and is piece of cake to use.

Node Wrangler ($0 - included in Blender)

If you watch a shading or compositing tutorial and information technology doesn't start with enabling node wrangler, that's probably because information technology's but assumed that you're already using it.

The most-used feature is Ctrl-Shift-clicking on any node to preview it, but what'due south less known is that you tin besides use Ctrl+Alt and either the plus, minus, multiply, or equals symbols to instantly add together a mix node of the corresponding type.

Y'all can also add mapping nodes or all your PBR textures at once, reload all your images with a click of a push button, or quickly switch node types with Shift+S. It may exist an quondam addon, but it's definitely kept upward with the times and is every bit useful every bit ever.

TexTools (Free on Github)

Originally a super popular 3DS Max script, this addon is a set up of tools for UV manipulation and texture creation. At that place'south a heck of a lot packed into this one, and it's completely complimentary.

The start section lets you lot set the paradigm size and padding, switch betwixt your UV sets, reload all your textures, or add a exam grid.

The Layout panel is filled with operations you lot tin use to align, flip, rotate, or scale your UV elements any which manner. My favorites here are Rectify which just aligns everything to the X and Y, similar to the UV Squares addon, and the ability to automatically sample the texel density and ready all your islands to the same density in 1 click. That is SO helpful.

Y'all tin also rapidly select your islands based on similar topology, whether they're overlapping, flipped, or are on the boundaries of the mesh.

The Baking panelis like an addon in and of itself. It lets you broil all of the important maps like normal maps, AO, Material ID, Curvature, Lengthened, and a whole lot more. Just select ane or more objects and striking bake!

It fifty-fifty explodes your mesh for you, and so you can bake your ambient occlusion correctly and your normals won't get all mixed upward. In one click! How have I non seen this until now!

TexTools also lets you do weird stuff like create a mesh out of UV islands, which you can then morph back onto the object. Seems like it would be cool for creating clothes or something, but I haven't really found a use for it yet. But information technology'southward fun to practice. Anyhow, I'grand a new fan of TexTools, it'south free, go grab it, and donate a couple of dollars to the developer Hendrik Schoenmaker so that he can keep information technology supported.

If, for whatever reason, this addon doesn't encounter all your UV needs, check out UV Toolkit, UV Squares, and Texel Density Checker. They can exist really handy to have as alternatives.

DECALmachine ($forty on Blender Marketplace)

When I starting time saw an early on demo of this i, I thought it was blackness magic.

I had a decision to brand: was making great-looking hard surface game assets super quickly really worth making a deal with the devil? I considered information technology, but it turns out...information technology just takes xl bucks.

DECALmachine uses shrinkwrap projection, normal data transfer, clever parallax mapping, and a handful of other tricks to permit you easily add details to your mesh objects.

Each decal is like shooting fish in a barrel to edit later on, so you lot can do some cool tricks with stretching and cutting corners to make them fit most use cases.

It comes with 108 bully decalsthat are set to utilize, only it besides has a super easy to use decal creator so that you tin can add your ain.

It'south streamlined for a depression-poly workflow for a game engine, but you tin can just as hands use it for high-res animations. Y'all can either continue the decals on the mesh or broil them downwards to PBR textures which you can use in whatever software.

If you practise any sci-fi or mechanical modeling, definitely catch a copy of DECALmachine.

BPainter ($39.99 on Blender Marketplace)

Texture painting with layers in Blender. Finally!

That'due south already absurd enough, but Bpainter takes things a step further with full-blown aligning layers, procedural layers, and layer masks, all within cloth channels and so y'all tin can rapidly switch betwixt painting your diffuse, metallic, or roughness, or whatever other types of maps.

The way it'southward fix up is super flexible and it works with any workflow and node setup, not only the basic Principled Shader PBR setup.

Does information technology plow Blender into Substance Painter or Photoshop? Not quite, simply it'south one heck of a step in the correct direction. Across merely layers, Bpainter puts everything else you need for painting right inside reach - color palettes, brush settings, textures, and more.

It takes the handy things that are usually hard to get to and makes them like shooting fish in a barrel to use while organizing the less used settings so they don't accept upwardly so much space.

The effect is a super intuitive UI that has everything you need.

The latest version for Blender ii.eight likewise comes with a map generator, so yous tin apace bake things like AO and Curvature to use for layer masking and other cool things.

Of grade, you lot tin combine all your layers when you lot're washed painting, then you can export your model to any other app. You tin even assign different material channels to different RGBA channels, which, for a game artist, saves a lot of fourth dimension.

If yous plan on doing whatever texture painting in Blender whatsoever, save your sanity and take hold of a copy of BPainter start.

nine. All-time LIGHTING AND RENDERING ADDONS

Screen Space Global Illumination for Eevee ($0 - gratuitous on GumRoad)

Screen-Space Global Illumination for Eevee is quite an original, remarkable improver.

The improver title already says a lot: installing this offers a new way of computing global illumination, also known every bit bounced low-cal, in a scene that'south rendered using Eevee.

No more fiddling with Irradiance Probes, SSGI for Eevee generates GI on a material level, and the results are quite impressive, including the ability to use emissive materials as light sources.

LeoMoon LightStudio (costless or $25 on Blender Market)

LeoMoon LightStudio is a great add-on to expand your Blender lighting toolset. It introduces the possibility to easily add different lite types on a panoramic environment sail, similar to high-terminate lighting/rendering tools like HDR Light Studio or Keyshot.

But you can add together concrete scene lights with many extra options every bit well. It's a really powerful lighting toolset. Have a look at the production pages linked below for details.

Note that LeoMoon LightStudio is also available for complimentary, then you lot tin try it first, and if yous find it useful, delight consider supporting the improver's further development by purchasing it from Blender Market.

• LeoMoon LightStudio complimentary

• LeoMoon LightStudio paid

LuxCoreRender ($0 - gratis)

Recommended: Create a Stylized Environment

Model a 3D woods with the Sapling addon for trees, Eevee for existent-time materials and lighting, particles for growing grass, and the compositor for final treatment. Watch the trailer.

Eevee and Cycles are nifty renderers, but in that location are more costless renderers for Blender. In my apprehensive opinion, LuxCoreRender is i of the best renderers around, and its Blender integration is very skillful. You just install the LuxBlendCore addition, switch the agile renderer to LuxCoreRender and you're ready to go.

LuxCoreRender's biggest talent is realism. The lighting, materials, and rendering methods accurately mimic real-world physics with circuitous algorithms. Caustics in particular are fantastic when using LuxCoreRender.

To recoup for the heavy ray calculations that are necessary for a high level of realism, LuxCoreRender comes equipped with speed-accelerating options like OIDN denoising and several types of caches.

LuxCoreRender takes some fourth dimension to learn, particularly the materials, only once you get the hang of it, y'all can start utilizing its crawly rendering power.

Materials, lighting, and rendering created using LuxCoreRender (🔗 metinseven.nl)

Did nosotros miss whatever of your favorites? Let me know in the comments!

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Source: https://cgcookie.com/articles/best-blender-addons-modeling-animation-sculpting-updated-for-2021