The MOST MODELING TOOLS in a Blender Add-On? RanTools for Blender!

what's up guys justin here with the cg essentials dot com so in today's video we're gonna check out an add-on that has a ton of different tools for doing everything from modeling to adding hdri backgrounds backdrops everything like that does a little bit of everything it's called rand tools let's go ahead and just jump into it alright so as someone who's super interested in blender add-ons and other tools i usually try to keep an eye on what's popular inside of the blender market and a week or two ago this add-on popped up into the popular items so and for a while it was sitting in the top spot and so i really wanted to get into it and check out exactly what it was and what it could do and so ran tools and p cutter is a really interesting add-on because it's kind of a collection of a little bit of everything i was actually kind of shocked to see how many tools are contained inside of this add-on so it is a paid add-on you can check it out in the blender market i'll link to it in the notes down below there's two versions in here there's the essentials and the complete i have no idea why you would go with the essentials when the complete is three dollars more so my recommendation if you are interested in this is to check out the complete version basically it's got this like massive collection of tools inside of it so everything from an hdri library to um it's got different cutting tools that allow you to cut different different geometry it's also got asset browser support for a material library cloth simulations cable simulations just a ton of different stuff kind of contained in here and so i want to give you kind of a high level overview of some of the things that are contained inside of this tool set but it really does have rendering tools it's got hard surface modeling tools just a lot of stuff in here so let's go ahead and jump over into blender and start taking a look and i will note by the way that there's detailed documentation as well so um it's linked on that page but there's a change log as well as different tutorials and notes for all of the different tools so you can see camera render curve material other things like that so if you are looking for information on any of these tools the documentation is a great place to start and so to enable this add-on you just install it like you would any other add-on you just go into your edit preferences and under ran tools you want to enable object rand tools and notice how when you do this there's a ton of things you can adjust in here so things like you can adjust the different panels that are going to show up on the right-hand side of the page you can set where your asset folders are as well as adjusting the ui um you can also set up different key maps so you can see how a bunch of these are already set up in here so that you can access these simply with your keys so for example the add light setups you would just tap the l key notice how that's going to link you to the add light setups function where you can adjust different lights in here so we're not going to worry too much about that right now we'll get more into that in a second but you can adjust these and kind of customize them to your desires all right so first off you can access the cutters in here the boolean cutters by doing a shift cue on your cube on your keyboard that's going to allow you to access actually several different tools i'm not just the boolean cutters in this case though notice how there's an option over here for draw and so when you go into the draw function what that's going to do is that's going to let you draw a shape and then you can move your mouse to adjust it so that it cuts inside of an object like this you can use this to quickly add those boolean cutters by doing that so you can use the draw function notice how there's different uh different uh shapes that you can draw so if i tap b for example notice i can draw on this face and i can use this to cut in here like this and so there's other things you can do too like adding bevels and other things like that you can do that by tapping the b key or you can tap the v key in order to do a vertex bevel so i'm just going to give you access to a lot of different things that you can use in order to adjust the cutters that you're using so another great example is if we were to go top down like this do a shift cue whoops do a shift cue and then let's say we wanted to draw a circle like this so i'm just going to draw this in here but notice how there's an option for r where you can set this to be a radial array then you can scroll your mouse up and down and move this in order to add a radial array in a circle right here notice when these overlap you get a bunch of z fighting in here so you don't necessarily want these touching but you can use this in order to quickly adjust that and then you can also move your mouse like this in order to cut them in and out and other things like that so notice how you can tap the other keys in here to do other things like wireframe but it's really easy to use to add these boolean cutters and so notice that you can also adjust these cutters by doing a shift cue and then going down into your cutters list right here notice how this is going to give you a list of your different cutters and then you can adjust them right so you can adjust this with the s key so it's a slice a c key or it's an inset a d with the difference but you can also adjust things like the thickness by tapping the t key so just a bunch of different stuff and the cool thing about this is these are these are not permanent these are done using modifiers so what that means is that means that you can come back in here and make those changes so there's also a grid function so if i do a shift q draw then i mouse over a surface like this notice how i can tap the control key in order to add a grid well the cool thing about the grid is now if you were to draw on top of this so if i was to do like an a or we're going to do an x actually and hold the ctrl key notice how my mouse will snap to the different points on this grid so you can use this to draw on a grid with at least some level of accuracy with these different points like this so now if i was to hit the enter key but now i can tap the g key and adjust the line thickness in here and so we could use this to add like a polygon inset i could tap the t key to adjust the thickness other things like that so it gives you a lot of control over what you're able to create all right so now let's take a look at some of the light tools that contain in here so if i have an object selected like my body model and i tap the l key notice what that's going to do is that's going to add a light setup and then you can kind of scroll your mouse in order to see the different light setups and so we'll switch over to ev but notice how when i uh notice how i can scroll my mouse to get these different light setups like this so i can use this to quickly add lights to objects in my model so i can also tap the a key to adjust the alignment i can hold the control key in order to adjust the light intensity like this i can also tap the t key in order to set these to trap track to the object but if i click then move my mouse notice how i can also adjust the intensity of those lights before clicking to place them like this so another cool function of that is there's also an option if you tap the u key to quickly add a backdrop then you can scroll through this and this is going to give you different backdrops based on the object that you're working with so this is a fast way to add a bunch of different kinds of backdrops to your models without you having to do a whole lot of work in order to do that so you can also adjust the bevel once this is placed you can scroll your mouse to set more or less bevel segments and you can adjust things like your color like your hue your saturation other things like that just by moving your mouse so it's really interesting way to set up render setups inside of blender so it also gives you access to the ambient cg material library so basically the way that that works is say you've got an object like this one i'm just going to do a shift key again and so we're just going to jump in here we're actually going to click on the library function right here but notice that's going to give you access to the ambient cg material library and so you can do a search so you can look for like metal right here click on search and now if we click on this you can see the different metal types that are contained inside that library so let's say we were to select this metal plates is interesting to me so let's go ahead and select that but you can click on any of the resolution options in this case for example i'm just going to go with a 1k due to my internet speed but we're going to select that and notice it's going to download this and it's going to apply it to my object and so if i want to adjust the way that looks i can just do a shift queue click on adjust and so then you can make adjustments to those things just by doing a shift queue and adjusting that and so inside your model you can also hold the shift j keys and when you do a shift j you can select different materials from the drop down to apply to this model so if i do a shift j notice i can pick from any material that's in my model and adjust it and so there's a bunch of other material functions contained inside this add-on which i'm not really going to get into but you can check them out and so there's also a number of different node tools in here that allow you to like mix different materials together other things like that i'm not going to get too far into that right now just know that they are contained inside of this add-on like i said this add-on does seem to contain a little bit of everything and so there's also a pretty great cable function in here so i kind of like the way that it does the simulations so if we do a shift q again go up to cables and we want to click on create right here what this is going to do is it's going to let us click on a surface and select a couple different points and then you can adjust things like your tension by tapping the t key by moving this around and if you lose that you can just go back in here and select edit so i'm going to adjust my tension out some more you can tap the e key to adjust the extrusion in here other things like that but one of the things i really like about this is if you go to a shift key and click on simulate what that's going to do is that's going to actually come in here and that's going to simulate your cable and the way that should work so if i tap the d key notice how i can adjust the stretch in here so the longer the stretch the longer the cable is going to go right but when you're done you can just hit the enter key or actually you have to click but now your cable is actually going to kind of like hang down inside of your model so you can use this to simulate those really quickly so you can also do multiple wires so with the selected right notice how i can adjust the number of wires that are in here i can adjust the radius of the strands i can adjust the twist by tapping the v key so you can see those twisting over here as well as the different wire types you can tap the f key and set if it's parallel or radial so you can also add like caps to your wires so if i do a shift q let's say we've created a cable right here adjust our tension out a little bit but let's see where to do a shift cue edit it and activate the cap picker right here you can use this in order to place caps on the ends of your cable so you can model cap objects and then it'll place it on the ends of your cables just like this so one i haven't quite figured out yet but it's in here is you can use an object to create like a cable covering in here as well so then finally you also can quickly set up hdris from polyhaven just by doing a shift in or maybe it's an alt-n it's an all-in and you can click in here and you can select the different uh the different types or you can do a search but it's going to give you a list of the hdris that are in here so for example let's say i wanted to add this photo studio right here well i could bring that hdri in just by clicking on the button right here and it's going to go ahead and let you adjust different things about this but then when you're done you can click on ok it'll actually set up the hdri for you so now if i was to jump into my rendered mode like this notice how that hdri is set up and lighting my model right here all right so as i got further into this tool i was shocked by the number of functions that are contained inside of it it's really got a little bit of everything so i'm really impressed by the feature set of this add-on but i'd love to hear from you in the comments down below what do you think about this tool is this something you'd be interested in i just love having that conversation with you guys i will link to that on this page as well as always thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and i will catch you in the next video thanks guys

Channel: The CG Essentials

Views: 12,568

Keywords: blender, blender 2.82, blender 2.8, blender modifier tutorials, blender tool tutorial, the blender essentials, the cg essentials, thecgessentials.com, justin geis, justin geis blender, blender 2.9, blender 2.91, blender RAN tools, blender rantools, blender rantools pcutter, blender p-cutter, blender ran tools P-cutter

Id: Tkga1kgBO4A

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022