In Blender - Part 1. I use Blender these days to design projects. Its a free, open-source 3D modeling.
- Blender 3d Book Pdf
- Adobe After Effects Vs Blender
- Adobe Walls In Blender
- Adobe Blender
- Adobe Blender Download
- Adobe Pixel Blender
Become a Patreon with lots of benefits: artstation: also available for freelanc. Use Blender and Illustrator to Make Cool Technical Drawings: Here's a technique I've been using lately in designing and sharing some of my projects. I received a few comments about how I made the diagram in my Passive Victrola iPhone Amp Instructable. With this technique, technical lab. Blender is an open source 3D application developed by both Blender Foundation and its community. In the past, Blender has oftentimes been overlooked as the 'free alternative' if you couldn't afford other industry applications. However, with its recent updates it has become a viable alternative on its own. Blender is one of the most popular open-source 3D animation softwares available. Aside from facilitating standard 3D animation tasks like rigging, modeling, and texturing, Blender features detail-driven tools for elements like fluid, smoke, and particle simulation, as well as advanced sculpting and soft body simulation.
Barely a day goes past without a new addon being released. It's awesome, but it's hard to keep up. So I've searched the community to find 12 of the best addons available today.
Last year we shared this list of free addons, but a year has passed and the Blender Market is booming. So in this post we'll look at both the best free and paid addons available..
1. Asset Flinger
What it does: Allows you to quickly and easily import your objects into other scenes.
Probably one of the coolest free addons that speeds your workflow. It works by adding a new toolshelf in Blender which lets you access your assets and easily import them to your scene just with a click. It's still a work in progress, and has a lot of features to be added in the future, but it's pretty awesome as-is!
- Price: Free!
- Author: Manu Jarvinen
2. RetopoFlow
What it does: Makes retopologizing a mesh, much, much faster and easier.
Probably the highest quality paid addon around. Created and supported by CGCookie, this addon is made for professionals.
This addon exists because when you sculpt something, you're not thinking about structure of your mesh. So the resulting mesh is ugly. But in order to apply textures, animate it or just make a clean render, you need to convert it into a cleaner mesh. Normally this involves a painful click-by-click method, but this addon makes it much, much easier. It's a toolset designed just for retopologizing something, and it's awesome at it.
- Price: $71.25
- Author: CG Cookie
3. The Grove
What it does: Generates beautiful trees.
This works much like the Sapling Addon that comes with Blender, however, it has more improved features and a simplified interface for easier growing of trees. It's still constrained to Blender's operators which means you can't move, scale or rotate the tree until after you've finished editing all the parameters (kind of annoying). But it does as advertised, and makes great trees. It's the best tool for making trees in Blender, than anything else currently available.
- Price: $119.80
- Author: Wybren van Keulen
4. EasyFX
What it does: Allows you to add compositing effects to your renders very quickly
If you're sick and tired of making complicated node setups just to do basic things in the compositor (like add a vignette) then this addon is for you. It gives you a plethora of the most-commonly used effects and adjustments right inside the Image Editor. The very nifty UI exposes the internal parameters that would be rather tedious to work with if you fiddled with it yourself.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Nils Söderman
5. Mirage
Allows you to: Easily create complex terrains
This is the ANT Landscape addon on steroids! If you're an environment artist tasked with making a largescale landscape, this will save you hours. It shines in it's easy-to-understand interface with helpful tools like showing you the vertex count of a terrain you're about to make before hitting that 'Generate' button.
- Price: $25
- Author: Diego Gangl
6. Matalogue
Python html to markdown. What it does: Gives you quick access to all the materials and lights in your scene. Html table to markdown online.
Making complex scenes, means dealing with large amounts of materials, lights and compositing setups. This tool by Greg Zaal alleviates all these frustrations for you by giving you access to all this in one tab in the Node Editor.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Greg Zaal
7. Asset Sketcher
Allows you to: Quickly distribute your objects by 'painting' them into your scene
Placing assets/objects manually in your scene can get pretty tiresome. But thankfully, this addon makes the job easier and more artist-friendly by utilizing a painting stroke approach to placing objects. It's as simple as clicking and dragging on your 'canvas,' (plus more tools). Awesome!
- Price: $29.95
- Author: Andreas Esau, Matthias Esau
8. Animation Nodes
Allows you to: Animate almost anything in Blender!
This addon brings parametric modeling and animation to life! I've been wanting a feature much like Houdini where you can input node values and have them drive object properties. By default, this is possible through Blender via constraints and python coding--but this addon makes it intuitive and easy to use. It makes it easy to do mechanical rigs, motion design, and programming. It opens up a whole array of possibilities!
- Price: $0
- Author: Jacques Lucke
9. BakeTool
Hassle-free baking of textures for your scene
Remember the baking tutorial we did a few years ago? This addon makes the process and workflow easier, and much more manageable. It basically bakes all the shading and light information on your objects so you don't have to keep re-rendering all the frames of your animation. It works best in ArchiViz and games, and works for both Cycles and the Blender Internal renderer. So cool!
- Price: $14.95
- Author: Cogumelo Softworks
10. BLAM Blender Camera Calibration Toolkit
Easily match the angle and perspective of a reference photo
This addon makes combining a render with a photograph a piece of cake. Using some clever programming, it accurately guesses the focal length and angle that the photo was taken with, so you can effortlessly put a render over the top :) We mentioned it one of our recent tutorials.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Per Gantelius
Blender 3d Book Pdf
11. IK-Text Effects
Add special effects to any text in Blender
If you've ever envied the effortlessly results from tools like Adobe After Effects, this addon is for you. It's a powerful toolset for animating text in Blender.
- Price: $14.99
- Author: IK3D
12. Gaffer - Light Manager
Take full control of all the lights in your scene
This addon makes your lighting workflow a whole lot easier! Lighting in Blender can be fun, but it can also be frustrating when you have too many lights to manually adjust, and begin to lose track of which does what. Using this addon will alleviate those problems. It gives you control over your scene's lighting setup from a single panel, tweaking settings without needing to find and select each light one by one. A must have for big scenes!
- Price: $17.95
- Author: Greg Zaal
Allows you to: Quickly and easily add realistic outdoor lighting to your scenes 42re transmission pan.
Disclaimer: We made this, so we're biased.
Outdoor lighting is more complex than just a sun lamp, so we created this addon to give you real world lighting inside Blender. It works by using real skies that were captured in HDR, and feeds it in Blender, providing both accurate lighting and reflections across the entire scene.
It comes with 80 HDR skies, that you can cycle through effortlessly:
You can even try the demo before you buy. I used it myself in this scene.
- Price: $97 - $197
- Author: Blender Guru
- Buy it: http://www.blenderguru.com/product/pro-lighting-skies/
- How to Use it: http://www.blenderguru.com/install-pro-lighting-skies/
Do you have your favorite addons that aren't on the list? Post in the comments below!
What you learned: How to adjust the opacity (transparency) of artwork and apply blending modes to achieve creative results
Change the opacity of content
You can adjust the opacity (how see-through the content is) for all types of content, from an individual object, to a group, to a whole layer.
To change the opacity of content, select the artwork and adjust the Opacity value in the Properties panel.
Note: If you change the opacity for a group, then ungroup the group, the opacity change will be removed and the individual objects in the group will retain their individual opacity setting.
Understand blending modes
Blending modes let you vary the ways that the colors of objects blend with the colors of underlying objects. When you apply a blending mode to an object, the effect of the blending mode is seen on any objects that lie beneath the object's layer or group.
Copy and rotate artwork using the Rotate tool
- With the shape (circle) selected, select the Rotate tool in the toolbar.
- Press Option (MacOS) or Alt (Windows), click somewhere near the bottom center of the shape to open the Rotate dialog box, and automatically set the point around which the artwork will rotate.
- Set the rotation angle and click Copy to make a copy.
Adobe After Effects Vs Blender
Probably one of the coolest free addons that speeds your workflow. It works by adding a new toolshelf in Blender which lets you access your assets and easily import them to your scene just with a click. It's still a work in progress, and has a lot of features to be added in the future, but it's pretty awesome as-is!
- Price: Free!
- Author: Manu Jarvinen
2. RetopoFlow
What it does: Makes retopologizing a mesh, much, much faster and easier.
Probably the highest quality paid addon around. Created and supported by CGCookie, this addon is made for professionals.
This addon exists because when you sculpt something, you're not thinking about structure of your mesh. So the resulting mesh is ugly. But in order to apply textures, animate it or just make a clean render, you need to convert it into a cleaner mesh. Normally this involves a painful click-by-click method, but this addon makes it much, much easier. It's a toolset designed just for retopologizing something, and it's awesome at it.
- Price: $71.25
- Author: CG Cookie
3. The Grove
What it does: Generates beautiful trees.
This works much like the Sapling Addon that comes with Blender, however, it has more improved features and a simplified interface for easier growing of trees. It's still constrained to Blender's operators which means you can't move, scale or rotate the tree until after you've finished editing all the parameters (kind of annoying). But it does as advertised, and makes great trees. It's the best tool for making trees in Blender, than anything else currently available.
- Price: $119.80
- Author: Wybren van Keulen
4. EasyFX
What it does: Allows you to add compositing effects to your renders very quickly
If you're sick and tired of making complicated node setups just to do basic things in the compositor (like add a vignette) then this addon is for you. It gives you a plethora of the most-commonly used effects and adjustments right inside the Image Editor. The very nifty UI exposes the internal parameters that would be rather tedious to work with if you fiddled with it yourself.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Nils Söderman
5. Mirage
Allows you to: Easily create complex terrains
This is the ANT Landscape addon on steroids! If you're an environment artist tasked with making a largescale landscape, this will save you hours. It shines in it's easy-to-understand interface with helpful tools like showing you the vertex count of a terrain you're about to make before hitting that 'Generate' button.
- Price: $25
- Author: Diego Gangl
6. Matalogue
Python html to markdown. What it does: Gives you quick access to all the materials and lights in your scene. Html table to markdown online.
Making complex scenes, means dealing with large amounts of materials, lights and compositing setups. This tool by Greg Zaal alleviates all these frustrations for you by giving you access to all this in one tab in the Node Editor.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Greg Zaal
7. Asset Sketcher
Allows you to: Quickly distribute your objects by 'painting' them into your scene
Placing assets/objects manually in your scene can get pretty tiresome. But thankfully, this addon makes the job easier and more artist-friendly by utilizing a painting stroke approach to placing objects. It's as simple as clicking and dragging on your 'canvas,' (plus more tools). Awesome!
- Price: $29.95
- Author: Andreas Esau, Matthias Esau
8. Animation Nodes
Allows you to: Animate almost anything in Blender!
This addon brings parametric modeling and animation to life! I've been wanting a feature much like Houdini where you can input node values and have them drive object properties. By default, this is possible through Blender via constraints and python coding--but this addon makes it intuitive and easy to use. It makes it easy to do mechanical rigs, motion design, and programming. It opens up a whole array of possibilities!
- Price: $0
- Author: Jacques Lucke
9. BakeTool
Hassle-free baking of textures for your scene
Remember the baking tutorial we did a few years ago? This addon makes the process and workflow easier, and much more manageable. It basically bakes all the shading and light information on your objects so you don't have to keep re-rendering all the frames of your animation. It works best in ArchiViz and games, and works for both Cycles and the Blender Internal renderer. So cool!
- Price: $14.95
- Author: Cogumelo Softworks
10. BLAM Blender Camera Calibration Toolkit
Easily match the angle and perspective of a reference photo
This addon makes combining a render with a photograph a piece of cake. Using some clever programming, it accurately guesses the focal length and angle that the photo was taken with, so you can effortlessly put a render over the top :) We mentioned it one of our recent tutorials.
- Price: Free!
- Author: Per Gantelius
Blender 3d Book Pdf
11. IK-Text Effects
Add special effects to any text in Blender
If you've ever envied the effortlessly results from tools like Adobe After Effects, this addon is for you. It's a powerful toolset for animating text in Blender.
- Price: $14.99
- Author: IK3D
12. Gaffer - Light Manager
Take full control of all the lights in your scene
This addon makes your lighting workflow a whole lot easier! Lighting in Blender can be fun, but it can also be frustrating when you have too many lights to manually adjust, and begin to lose track of which does what. Using this addon will alleviate those problems. It gives you control over your scene's lighting setup from a single panel, tweaking settings without needing to find and select each light one by one. A must have for big scenes!
- Price: $17.95
- Author: Greg Zaal
Allows you to: Quickly and easily add realistic outdoor lighting to your scenes 42re transmission pan.
Disclaimer: We made this, so we're biased.
Outdoor lighting is more complex than just a sun lamp, so we created this addon to give you real world lighting inside Blender. It works by using real skies that were captured in HDR, and feeds it in Blender, providing both accurate lighting and reflections across the entire scene.
It comes with 80 HDR skies, that you can cycle through effortlessly:
You can even try the demo before you buy. I used it myself in this scene.
- Price: $97 - $197
- Author: Blender Guru
- Buy it: http://www.blenderguru.com/product/pro-lighting-skies/
- How to Use it: http://www.blenderguru.com/install-pro-lighting-skies/
Do you have your favorite addons that aren't on the list? Post in the comments below!
What you learned: How to adjust the opacity (transparency) of artwork and apply blending modes to achieve creative results
Change the opacity of content
You can adjust the opacity (how see-through the content is) for all types of content, from an individual object, to a group, to a whole layer.
To change the opacity of content, select the artwork and adjust the Opacity value in the Properties panel.
Note: If you change the opacity for a group, then ungroup the group, the opacity change will be removed and the individual objects in the group will retain their individual opacity setting.
Understand blending modes
Blending modes let you vary the ways that the colors of objects blend with the colors of underlying objects. When you apply a blending mode to an object, the effect of the blending mode is seen on any objects that lie beneath the object's layer or group.
Copy and rotate artwork using the Rotate tool
- With the shape (circle) selected, select the Rotate tool in the toolbar.
- Press Option (MacOS) or Alt (Windows), click somewhere near the bottom center of the shape to open the Rotate dialog box, and automatically set the point around which the artwork will rotate.
- Set the rotation angle and click Copy to make a copy.
Adobe After Effects Vs Blender
Apply a blending mode to the copied shape
- With content selected, click the Opacity option in the Properties panel on the right to open the Transparency panel.
- Click Normal to open the Blending Mode menu. You can choose from a wide range of blending modes; they are grouped in the menu according to their function. Normal is the default mode and doesn't apply any interaction between the colors of artwork. The dark blending modes like Darken, Multiply, or Color Burn make the resulting color darker. The lighten blending modes like Lighten and Screen, make the resulting color lighter overall.
Note: If you experience issues previewing blending modes, try choosing View > Preview On CPU or View Using CPU.
Adobe Walls In Blender
Create more copies of the shape
To add more copies of the circle, let Illustrator apply the same copy and rotation you did previously using the Transform Again command.
Adobe Blender
- With the circle still selected, choose Object > Transform > Transform Again. Illustrator creates a copy and rotates it using the same relative rotation point. Choose that command several more times to add enough circles to complete the artwork.
Apply an opacity change to the artwork
Adobe Blender Download
You can apply both blending modes and opacity changes to artwork.
Adobe Pixel Blender
- With the Selection tool selected, drag across the circles. Change the Opacity value in the Properties panel to adjust the opacity (transparency) of the selected artwork.
