Handy Toolset for Blender
A collection of handy operators for daily blender use.
- quick Cloth: turn selected face or object into simulated cloth
- Selection to Multi-Panels: turn selected face to panels based on existing or user defined internal edge as region.
- Generate random internal lines on previously made panel based on mesh topology (set ratio around 0.8 for optimal display of large panels). use redo panel for ratio, seed and panel size controls. manually added knife cuts to alter topology for more sub-panel variety.
- intersect panel: create sub-panel for easy manipulation
- quick plate: turn select face or object into a thick plate
- Simple boolean pie menu, take a look at this video for more info.
- bevel operator super charged
add angled bevel, reorder bevel to last, bevel selected edges, bevel outward face, bevel boolean object. scroll to bottom page for detailed explanation.
- quick orientation and pivot to select: handy way to manipulate object transform and pivot
- custom separate faces with normal intact
- quick smooth: quickly smooth shade selected object at adjustable angle, it also smooth the children cutter objects if there is any. ( Post Blender 4.1, this operator is no long available, use Object - Shade Smooth Angle instead)
- various viewport display toggles: silhouette, matcap, vertex color, texture display
- stickywrap to surface: shinkwrap an opening of one mesh onto another mesh surface and blend the surface normals.
turn off the "outline" for better display of blending
use these face snapping settings for easy placement
- minimalist retopo panel
- remove empty collections
Have a Question? Email me: learnasimakeit@outlook.com
digital product does NOT offer refund.
**************************************** Updates *******************************************
update 1.5:
reformat to meet Blender 4.2 extension platform standard
update 1.4.1:
compatible for Blender 4.1
removed Quick Smooth Operator and Smooth Angle. Use the new Blender operator Object - Shade Smooth By Angle instead.
update 1.4
bevel operator super charged.
in version 1.4, the bevel modifier has several usage scenarios:
it can be accessed from the pie menu at upper right location.
one: if the active object is in Object Mode. it would add a regular bevel modifier with Angle Method. it will also move the modifier to the end of modifier stack if already exist.
two: in mesh Edit mode, if you select some edges, the bevel operator would only bevel the edges, same thing applies during boolean operation. to add or remove edges, locate the vertex group with the same name as the modifier and use Assign and Remove on selected edges.
three: if you select flat face of cutter mesh, the bevel operator will bevel outward, resulting a bevel on the base boolean object.
four: after a simple boolean (difference or union), select base object and cutter object (selection order does not matter), the bevel operator will replace the existing bool modifier with geometry node set up. you can then adjust the bevel, giving it mesh fusion effect. use Intersection Density to adjust the ring topology, and use the standard bevel modifier right below it to adjust the shape as one normal would. this is best used on curve surface.
since the connecting surface is generate on the fly, there would be some shading artifact. it is because some of the faces are stretched. to fix it, manually slide the closest vertex and let it auto merge, or apply the modifier stacks and manually merge the vertices.
update 1.3.5:
added: compatibility for Blender 4.0
update 1.3.4:
added: retopology shading support in blender 3.6
added: when doing modal boolean operation, in addition to the helper operators show in the addon panel, the also show up in modifier panel
update 1.3.3:
added: solidify toggle while in modal mode, could be beneficial to make panel lines with insetBool operator.
added: reorder bevel operator. almost always there is a bevel modifier in the stacks when doing hard surface, after a new cut, existing bevel modifier will not calculate the new cut. this ops will move the bevel mod to the very bottom and calculate the new cut.
changes: move the reorder bevel into the pie menu
update 1.3.2:
added: modal operators integrated with pie menu for a smoother workflow.
update 1.3.1:
fix: display abnormal that happens in Blender 3.1 above.
removed the cutter collection concept, instead use children objects as cutters. thus, when move the base mesh, everything moves together.
added: a pie menu for the simple bool operators and face to plates operators. shortcut can be set in addon preference.
toggle cutters visibility will show/hide children cutters meshes on selected objects
apply modifiers will also clean up relevant cutters meshes on selected objects
update 1.3
added: remove empty collection
added: minimalist handy retopo panel
added: smooth verts. while smooth selected vertices, retopo mesh will automatically snap to target surface.
added: move verts. It is more of a personal habit. the default shortcut is "D". It can be changed in addon preference.
what it does: when shortcut key is pressed in mesh edit mode with vert selection, if nothing is selected, the vert closest to mouse cursor will be selected and moved with mouse movement, if some vertices are already selected, they will start to move with mouse movement, then left mouse click to confirm or right mouse click to cancel.
the purpose of move verts operator is to minimize index finger fatigue. for example, with the same goal of moving a vert point from A to B, lets compare the following scenarios:
1. default blender control scheme:
- move mouse over to a vert and click.
- press "G" and move mouse to new location.
- left click to confirm.
2. industry standard control scheme:
- move mouse over to a vert and click.
- press "W" and click & hold gizmo and move mouse to new location.
3. move verts:
- move mouse near a vert
- press "D" and move mouse to new location.
- left click to confirm.
It saves 50% of the left mouse click while constantly moving vertices around as retopology requires. this minimize the index finger fatigue in the long run. With proportional editing on, it can also adjust overall vertices position quickly.
update 1.2:
added user-defined custom tab renaming. open preference and under addon name. save settings and restart blender to take effect.
added new operator called "stickywrap".
update 1.1.2:
add QuickCloth compatibility in blender 3.0
update 1.1.1:
merge simple plate to multi panel. both operators have same modifier stacks for unified controls.
added Randomize Panels Button, it randomly generates internal panel lines on previously made panel.
the lines are based on its mesh topology, add a few more knife cuts for sub-panels variety.
update 1.1:
added: Selection to Multi-Panels. turn selected faces to panels based on existing or user-defined internal edge as region.
update 1.0.1:
added: Custom Separate Faces. when use the default separate selected faces, the normal is split along the edge.
this operator separate the face but keep the normal info.
InsetBoolean: a commonly used stacks of modifiers.
to update: delete the old version under addon tab and install the new one.
************************************** Q&A ******************************
here are some general guide.
1. install
in Blender, go to Edit - Preference - Addon tab and press Install. locate the zip file and install it.
first enable and assign the hotkeys for commonly used operators. some are enabled by default, others are not, modify them accordingly.
2. usage:
all operators are located at toolset tab on the right side of 3d viewport.
Apply Modifiers, Remove Modifiers: pretty straight forward, if you use any boolean operators, there are children objects, these two operators will remove them as well.
for how each operator works, please take a look at this video walkthrough. pie menu for faster boolean operations. example of stickywrap operator and how retopo panel works.
3. bevel operator super charged.
in version 1.4, the bevel modifier has several usage scenarios:
it can be accessed from the pie menu at upper right location.
one: if the active object is in Object Mode. it would add a regular bevel modifier with Angle Method. it will also move the modifier to the end of modifier stack if already exist.
two: in mesh Edit mode, if you select some edges, the bevel operator would only bevel the edges, same thing applies during boolean operation. to add or remove edges, locate the vertex group with the same name as the modifier and use Assign and Remove on selected edges.
three: if you select flat face of cutter mesh, the bevel operator will bevel outward, resulting a bevel on the base boolean object.
four: after a simple boolean (difference or union), select base object and cutter object (selection order does not matter), the bevel operator will replace the existing bool modifier with geometry node set up. you can then adjust the bevel, giving it mesh fusion effect. use Intersection Density to adjust the ring topology, and use the standard bevel modifier right below it to adjust the shape as one normal would. this is best used on curve surface.
since the connecting surface is generate on the fly, there would be some shading artifact. it is because some of the faces are stretched. to fix it, manually slide the closest vertex and let it auto merge, or apply the modifier stacks and manually merge the vertices.
or add a weighted normal to ease the artifacts
4 Blender Crushed while I am running Boolean Modal. now I can not open the pie menu, what's wrong?
The top bar color is chosen as a visual switch to indicate if the modal operator is running or not. in case of blender crushing, its color is not restored, so the code thinks the operator is still running.
to fix it, open "Python Console" and paste the following code and press enter, it will restore top bar to default color and resolve the issue.
bpy.context.preferences.themes[0].topbar.space.header = (0.1373,0.1373,0.1373,1)
5 Quick Cloth not working.
when you have a newer version of Blender installed/unzipped, on rare occasion, the Quick Cloth may not work because the quad remesh is not working properly. simply select a mesh object and manually run the Quadriflow Remesh once, it will be fine afterwards.