TOP 20 FREE Add-Ons That Come With Blender!

what's up guys justin here with the cgessentials.com so in today's video we're going to talk about some of the best add-ons that come shipped with blender let's go ahead and just jump into it alright so remember that you can access and enable all of these by going up to edit preferences and then under your add-ons to enable these you would just check the box next to the add-on that you want to enable and all these are available for free inside of blender so we're going to start with bolt factory so bolt factory is a tool that adds the ability to add a bolt to blender so if you do a shift a and do an add mesh and click on bowl what that's going to do is that's going to create a bowl inside a blender and then within the settings you can adjust things based on presets right here so you can use it to create nuts and bolts you can also adjust things like the bit type that's going to be included in here and you can adjust the bit depth you can adjust the head height and the overall length of your bolts and the different threads so if you're doing anything where you work with nuts and bolts inside a blender this could be a great tool for getting those added edit mesh tools is a tool set for blender that's contained inside of edit mode so you tab into edit mode and you get all these different options inside of the edit menu on the right hand side so this tool set contains a number of different tools some of them are actually contained in the left hand side of blender but there are tools in here for doing things like randomizing vertices there's also a great tool for offsetting edges that you can use in order to offset edges out as well as a function for setting edge length so what it does is it allows you to select an edge and then set the length that's in there and it'll automatically adjust the length of that object inside a blender so if you're doing any kind of like mesh editing this one's definitely worth checking out all right so f2 is a tool that's designed to make the process of adding quad geometry to your models easier so basically what it does is it allows you instead of having to come in here and create like edge loops or other things like that it gives you the ability to select a vertex like this and then just tap the f key and it'll create a new quad based on that vertex so notice that this really works on inside corners like this so if you select this corner tap the f key it's going to create those new vertices in addition it's also going to give you the ability on spaces like this one to be able to come in here and tap the f key and notice how you can quickly add in the extra edges in here to make this quad geometry so instead of having to or make this quad topology so instead of having to come in here and actually like adjust those manually and use like the bridge edge loops function this tool makes that a lot easier alright so loop tools is going to give you a number of tools inside of edit mode that you can use in order to edit geometry so for example let's say we were to select a couple faces in here like this and let's say that we wanted to add like a circular insert or something like that well there's a tool in here called circle that's basically going to take your vertices and move them into a circular shape like this well then you could just use this in order to extrude this down like this in order to create a circular shape on this more complex mesh so in addition there's also other tools in here for other things as well so there's a bridge function there's also a tool in here for flattening vertices so let's say for example that we were to select so let's say we were to select a series of vertices like this if we were to select the option for flatten and go with the normal view you could use this in order to flatten these just like this so notice how it takes all of these and it makes them flat along the x plane right here or the z plane depending on what you have selected so you can use this in order to quickly edit that geometry in here to make it flat you can also use the loft function in here in order to create surfaces across multiple loops like this you can use the number of segments in order to add segments in between the bridge gaps as well as the strength which is going to allow you to kind of adjust how uh how harsh the transition is in here like this geodesic domes is going to do exactly what it sounds like it's going to help you design geodesic domes inside blender so notice how if you adjust the frequency up and let's go ahead and look at our wireframe real quick notice how this is creating a geodesic dome in here based on the information you give it and then you can adjust the kind of object that it is the kind of class that's in here other things like that notice how these are all going to affect the geometry that's created in here so the octahedron for example is going to be different than the tetrahedron but you can also use this to adjust things like your radius so you can make this bigger or smaller other things like that as well so this is great for really quickly creating geodesic shapes inside a blender right so this next one is a really fun one it's called real snow and basically what it's going to do is it's going to allow you to select an object so like this one for example we'll use our bonnie object and you can set a height and all you have to do is click the button and it's going to add a snow material on top of your object so you can see how it came in here and it added snow on top of the vertical faces inside of this object and the snow looks really good it looks like it's got some kind of a normal applied to it making it look a lot like snow so you can really use this with any object you can adjust your coverage you can adjust your height and then click on the add snow function in order to quickly add snow to your models so discombobulator probably wins the award for the best name of a blender add-on and it has some interesting functionality as well basically the way that it works is you select a piece of geometry like this you do a shift a and you do a mesh and there's an option here for discombobulator after you enable the add-on obviously but what that's going to do is that's going to allow you to basically come in here and create randomizations on an object so if you do any kind of like sci-fi modeling or anything like that notice what this does this allows you to use that random extrusion type thing in here in order to quickly create different kinds of shapes like this so you can adjust the minimum heights you can adjust the taper of the shapes that are in here as well as you can use the option down below to add what's known as doodads which is just going to be some additional um it's going to be some additional geometry that's in here so you can pick your own geometry in there for for that as well but this is really interesting for that sci-fi style of modeling all right so ivy gen is a tool that allows you quickly generate iv inside a blender so let's say for example that i was to do a shift right click and you're going to tap the n key and under the create tab you're going to see the iv generator well this is going to place iv wherever your 3d cursor goes so in this case i'm going to place it on the surface right here then we're just going to click the button add new ivy what that's going to do is that's going to generate an iv object that lives on this surface right here and then you can go through and you can adjust different things in here so let's say for example that we wanted our iv to be longer so let's say we had a max length of 3 meters we could adjust this and then click on the button to update our iv notice what that's going to do is that's going to update this iv to align with that new length that we gave it so one thing to note is you do want to make sure that you're using a material with an opacity map so that you're not just getting a whole bunch of singular planes in here when you apply a texture to this object so the stored views add-on is going to allow you under your view menu right here it's going to allow you to save different views for quick access later so for example let's say i have a view like this one and i want to save this view i'm just going to click on save current you can rename these so i could call this front i could create a new view and i can call it back and then to navigate between the different views you can just click on them right here so that can be a really quick way to save different view locations inside of blender alright so vr scene inspection is an add-on designed to help you actually visit your scenes inside virtual reality so basically it's a tool that goes off to the side it allows you to click a button and add a virtual reality session so you can use this in order to step into your scenes i don't have a video for this right now um this is something we can touch on in the future if you're super interested in that but do make sure that you review the headset mounted displays section to make sure your headset is supported so measure it is a tool set designed to help you measure different things inside of your model so for example if i was to tab into edit mode and select this edge right here measure it is going to give you a window over in the view measure tools where you can show measurements so for example let's say that we select this segment right here and click on this it's going to show you a measurement of the segment and you can add as many measurements in here as you want so you can click in here like this and notice how that's going to add measurements for all of those and you can adjust the way that all of those look as well as toggling them on and off in the settings down below so scatter objects is a tool that's built in to quickly scatter objects long surfaces inside a blender so this one's a little bit confusing there's not a lot of documentation on it basically the way that it works is if you tap the n key notice how there's settings in here for your object scatter so you can set like the object scale other things like that but then the way you access this one is you start by selecting the objects you want to scatter and then the object you want to scatter along last then you just type the f3 key and you want to look for object scatter objects so what that's going to do is that's going to allow you to draw on this surface and notice how when you draw on this surface this is randomly scattering those objects on this surface so this is an interesting quick built-in tool notice i hit the enter key in order to finish this so when you hit the enter key that's going to finalize this this is an interesting tool for quickly scattering objects in here it's probably a little bit better to use geometry nodes if you can figure out how to do that but this is a quick easy way to do that if you just need a quick and dirty um object scatter all right so carver is a tool that's built in it's basically designed to help you cut objects in blender pretty much all of the time you're going to want to be in like an orthographic view so like a straight on view like this one but basically the way it works is you press shift or control shift x that's going to activate the tool notice how it tells you you can add different cut types so for example if i was to click and drag in here like this what that's going to do is that's going to cut through this object based on where i draw that rectangle so that's why you want to be in the orthographic view because if you're in a diagonal view like this one and then you do it so like this for example notice how it's going to cut this based on your current view that's in here um so you're going to want to be on that straight up and down view but it gives you a couple different ways to make those cuts so for example you can tap the space key and the line section is going to allow you to actually draw inside a blender like this and then you can just tap the space key to finish this but that's going to draw a shape based on something you draw or if you tap space again that's going to allow you to add a circle so we're going to single click move our mouse click again in order to cut a circle so this is a quick easy cutting tool for blender align tools is a tool set designed to help you align rotation location and scale of different objects so let's say we have these three boxes like this and you wanted to align these two with this object well notice how it tells you what the active object is but you would select these by doing a shift click then you would select this one last and you can see how you can use this in order to align their x location or you could align everything i wouldn't align everything because it's just going to put them in exactly the same place but it gives you the ability then to do different kinds of alignment so let's say i was to rotate this for example we could align the rotations of these objects as well so this is a great tool for getting objects to line up inside a blender so extra objects is going to do exactly what it's going to sound like it's getting a bunch of different it's going to give you a bunch of different additional functions down below for different objects you can add inside of your mesh functions so for example it's got like a rock generator where you can come in here and you can create multiple different kinds of rocks or other things like that procedurally you can also use it to add things like a twisted torus in here if you wanted to do that notice how you do have functions in here in order to adjust that or one of my favorites is if you go down to your extras right there's also tools in here for like wall factory so wall factory is going to create an actual like masonry block wall inside a blender and you can actually adjust this so that it creates the actual blocks inside your model so it just gives you a bunch of additional shapes that you can use in order to do different things inside a blender so import images as planes can be massively helpful if you're bringing in things like floor plans so for example if you do a shift a go to add image notice how this gives you the option for images as planes so that's actually going to let you pick an image file and bring it in as an actual 3d plane or as an actual flat plane that's real geometry inside a blender so for example if i was to bring my floor plan like this what that does is that lets me bring this in as an actual piece of geometry well then we could actually scale this up set it to scale and draw on top of it so this is really great for bringing in things like reference images for modeling inside blender all right so next we've got one of my favorites which is ant landscapes and so what ant landscapes does is it actually allows you to procedurally generate terrain by doing an ad mesh landscape and what it's going to do is it's going to allow you to generate this terrain right here and it's got a number of different presets in here so like canyons or other kinds of terrain let's go ahead and let's drop our wireframe on just so you can see the topology that's in here but it's got a ton of different presets in here for different surfaces so like lakes or other things like that you can also come in here and you can adjust these things so you can adjust like your mesh size for example so let's say i wanted this to be a lot bigger i could just add a 10 and a 10 like this but then you can adjust things like the noise size so how much noise is actually being created in here you can create the actual height other things like that inside of this tool so this is a really fantastic tool for really quickly creating terrains inside a blender so sapling tree generator is a really popular add-on so basically what it does is it allows you to do an add curve and you can click on the option for sapling tree generator and it's actually going to generate 3d trees inside a blender and so notice how there's options in here for a ton of different things having to do with like your geometry for example as well as things like leaves so you can add leaves to your trees and so down at the bottom there's a number of presets as well so things like willows or birch trees depending on the kind of tree that you want to create you can use this in order to do that really quickly but in addition to being able to create these really quickly what you can also do is you can also adjust this right so you can use the sliders and values in here in order to adjust different things about your trees so you can set the number of branches that are in here you can adjust the way that the branches are distributed along your tree by using a slider right here you can also randomize it just by changing the seed that's in here so this gives you a lot of control especially if you need to create like really quick trees for like context or other things like that so there are a ton of other things in here you can set so things like your branch radius those are all going to be adjustable all of the leaves are also going to be adjustable so if i show these for example notice how i can adjust the number of leaves as well as the shape of the leaves and the way that they hang on my trees other things like that so really adjustable quick way to create trees inside blender so this next one is fantastic i didn't even know it was a thing until i was doing research for this video but basically what it does is called try lighting and what it does is it allows you to quickly create three point lighting for blender so if i go into the add light and i click on three point lights notice how you do have to have the add-on enabled obviously but if i click on three-point lights what that's going to do is that's going to generate three lights around my object that are going to light it and so notice how if i click on this button right here you can adjust things like the height of the lights as well as the distance from an object and the cool thing about this is these are all kind of constrained to my body object meaning what i can do is i can adjust things like my angle and just how if i adjust my angle in here that's going to adjust these while they're still remaining pointed at my object so you can use this in order to really quickly create three-point lighting setups inside a blender which i had no idea that you could do that so super excited about that you can also adjust the energy of the lights right here all right and then the last one the number one on our list and you had to see this coming is node wrangler so note wrangler is a fantastic node editing tool for blender it has a ton of different functionalities that you can use in order to make your life a lot easier when you're working with different nodes um probably my favorite is the option for the smart node setup so if you go to the shader editor click on your principal bsdf as long as you have node wrangler enables you can do a control shift t that's going to allow you to go find all of your different material maps select them and then click on the button for principled texture setup and what that's going to do is that's going to automatically create and set up a texture down below with your different nodes so notice how this automatically brought in your color map your roughness map your normal map and your displacement and it set them all up inside blender so in addition it also uv mapped everything so set up your mapping so now what you can do is you can use this in order to adjust the size really quickly of your material so let's say we wanted this to be three three and three notice how this was set up really quickly inside a blender without you having to go through and do the manual node setup so there's a ton of other functions in here so things like lazy connect which is going to allow you to really quickly make links between different nodes other things like that i recommend going and looking in the documentation because there's just so many features contained inside a node wrangler um it's something that really you should be using no matter what as long as you use any kind of nodes in blender alright so that's my top 20 list leave a comment below let me know if i missed anything if you agree with this list i just love having that conversation with you guys i will link to some tutorials about some of these add-ons on this page as well but 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: 97,955

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 3.0, blender free add-ons, blender add-on, blender built in add ons, blender addon, blender builtin add on

Id: su9qqpdVjsU

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022