I second what toaster says, our students will not be able to add extension/addon files from external sites either. Having a bundled package would cheer up our I.T. team for the distributed install version. At least with the addons included you get feature parity also.
The beauty of Blender is that it can be used as a stand alone package and you dont have to download alot of extra functionality!
Well courses obviously expand, and there’s a degree of catering to individual needs during classes, but by and large a lot of the coursework is already built around certain workflows, it’s even featured in course requirements we have to submit to the local government for EU funding.
This would either need to include an extension to the course on addon management and rob me of some time for teaching other things down the line, or require me, or the admin, to increase the time we spend setting up workstations from a simple install off a thumbdrive to either connecting each machine to the web and manually installing each addon, or having to copy the blender config to a system directory, or even worse set up this repository for each one…
It’ll be even worse if students bring their own laptops, which they’re allowed to and often do, and some might have a mac or a windows or a linux machine and I can’t have a config for all three…
Ideally a zipped bundle that contains all the previously included addons that I can point blender to like we did with other addons would be ideal if there really has to be a change.
I recently downloaded the latest Blender version, 4.2, without realizing that the platform upgrade was completed by that version and several core add-ons that I was using were missing - not even listed in the search. Since my main desktop is usually offline, it caused some confusion, and I’m sure it would be confusing for other users as well.
I was wondering if it would be possible to ship the initial extension platform addon listing locally, so at least they would show up in the addon search (displaying as ‘needs to be downloaded’), allowing the user to see whether she can enable internet or find offline versions.
If we were to ship some pre-downloaded extensions, is there a way to make the extensions download to the SYSTEM path instead of USER path as a default? So that we could build and bundle addons in custom builds of Blender, and still have these addons from Extensions list as “installed” and potentially be updateable?
What would the source modification of the paths system look like?
UX:
Seems some users in the community are finding problems of missing default addons with many errors when migrating user configuration, so I was wondering if some of the former default addons on the Extensions website could be “activated and downloaded” by default to not get migration issues from user_pref.blend migrations from previous versions of Blender.
Backwards compatibility is a bit tricky atm.
I’m also in a favor of simplifying the deployment for multiple seats. I help to manage 16+ windows machines for our students and manually updating every one is an unnecessary work. And the rest of our team will have to do the same for other classrooms as well. In total we have around 50 machines if we count university staff machines as well.
Having a single zip with all previously shipped addons along with the Blender installer would be preferable. Our tech support staff could deploy this remotely instead of having to manually install every needed addon on every machine.
It would be nice if installing a theme would not change the current theme automatically.
It seems to add additional a delay during the startup, I assume due to remote update checks.
4.2 should install the enabled default add-ons automatically. I am now looking at a blank list; I don’t even remember what functionality came from what default add-on. This will definitely confuse a lot of people. And it takes a while to figure all that out and go through a long list of add-ons to reinstall them, imagine this being done a by a million people. It might cost humanity 500.000+ hours.
I was reading about different needs and opinions some users have regarding the default addons and about some of the problems that removing many addons and themes from the default install will cause, and I came to think of a possible solution:
Would it be possible that, when we are about to download Blender that there would be an optional extra step where we’re asked to tick which extensions do we want to come bundled in our download? If we don’t tick anything, we download base Blender + core extensions. If we tick the same extensions we already had installed, we download all of that and when we install Blender it also installs these extensions.
Is this too crazy? Or is it something possible?
Another thing I was thinking was that there could be a intermediate Blender release that would (somehow) include the default addons/themes one last time but also have the nee Extensions system enabled.
Just my two cents! I hope it helps on something.
The extensions platform with the new Blender integration have a lot of potential.
I just can’t get behind the UI/UX decisions 100%.
Why did the Extensions replace the addons tab in Preferences?
Overall, it is inconsistent and somewhat confusing.
Two possible solutions:
Bring back the Addons tab and keep it as unchanged as possible. Introduce a new separate Extensions tab. All extensions can be downloaded form the Extensions tab but addons activation and options are managed in the addons tab, themes are managed in the Themes tab, etc.
Bring back the Addons tab and allow users to download and install addons from the Addons tab, Themes from the theme tab, etc.
I believe either is more consistent than the current implementation.
I made a video showing my first impression of Extensions. I am linking to the part describing the problems I see and possible solutions (the TLDR is what I wrote above):
Also from the Blender chat
To summarize: right now these core default addons missing is causing migration issues: user_pref.blend file defines X default addon from 4.1, user migrates from 4.1, the user_pref.blend file is missing addon scripts, user has to install manually VS something has the X default addon already downloaded and installed, ready to be updated, and when the user migrates everything is fine, ready to activate, ready to uninstall (if you don’t want bloat) and ready to update.
Backwards compatibility with user settings I think will be important - ei… automatically download addons (which is not possible since that is opt-in) OR automatically have the default addons from extensions included (pre-downloaded) in the repo ready to be updated from online.
Not sure if this is the right place but I noticed that the extensions list (not sure why the name was changed from Addons to extensions…), is not in alphabetical order.
I really hope the decision to remove Node Wrangler, import image as planes, and Rigify from default blender is reconsidered. They are used in soo many tutorials and people expected them to become default blender features and to have them be made less available is sad news especially if it breaks people’s Blender setup when they update to 4.2
I actually think that would be a very good idea. Current UI/UX issues aside, it would mean the Blender download would pretty much be the same it is now (and outside maybe a little clean up on removing a few totally outdated/useless addons which are currently included) everything that one downloads and gets with Blender 4.1, will still just be there with 4.2.
While one still gets the advantage that they can be updated outside of any release cycle, but at the very least the overall functionality of Blender is unchanged from a base install point of view.
In effect the ‘bundle of 4.1 addons’ is just included as part of the normal Blender download, that just happens to use the Extensions Platform as a reference and update system.
Mostly because the bundled addons worked with most existing tutorials and workflows out of the box. They provided a very solid all around package that just worked as is.
I fully agree with Bravelittletoaster - removing them from installation/portable is a terrible choice for Blender core functionality in bigger companies or schools with restrictions. This is not about other good addons - for discovering new addons it is super good that we have the repository. The problem is removing plugins that were mostly accepted to be core Blender functionality by now.
Please don’t make the mistake of assuming unrestricted, or even easy internet access and installation rights everywhere. It used to be a huuuuge plus for blender, that it’s a ‘download and have a working package’.
And no, sorry, creating a separate repository on one thumb drive for yourself is not a good alternative. Doing this for yourself is one thing. Imagine teaching and realizing you forgot to enable an addon that now needs to be downloaded instead of just activated. That is a terrible, terrible choice.
Blender seriously needs to keep a version where all the usual plugins remain bundled unless the same functionality is provided otherwise out of the box. This is the assumed state of a functioning, vanilla Blender installation for years.
Please never assume internet access rights or easy installation in a school or big company.
I abslutey can see why Blender would want to do this. It makes the installer lighter, only downloads what is actually needed and keeps plugins up to date independently. For my personal, unrestricted PC at home I love it. For my day to day work in a company this could be seriously problematic.
Blender’s assumed core functionality by now depends on these plugins to be there and available on base installation.
Assumed core plugin installations and availability might from thereon out be out of sync for everybody with differing restrictions. If my colleagues from another department need to use blender and forget a plugin they need to potentially contact IT every time they want to enable something that used to be there before. If a partner company with similar restrictions doesn’t have the plugins available I can’t do anything about their systems, either. If I have a system with a plugin that got updated later on for someone outside of my company then despite having the same blender core version out plugins might run out of sync and compatibility. I really hope it doesn’t go so far and I am just panicking over nothing but I get very scary “Unity package downloader vibes” from this.
Please take this into consideration before permanently outsourcing functionality behind mandatory internet access.
(edit - reworded a few sentences for better clarification)
This definitely seems like it would be the best of both worlds. Ease of updating, while also removing the need for internet access by default.
I’m little confused about this. I am also teacher and have live classes. Similarly, I distribute add-ons (as well as default startup file, keyconfig etc.) so built-in addons are helpful.
But, Blender comes with dozens of add-ons. Realistically, how many do you actually use in class? From my courses I can say I have three addons that are mandatory, and around 10 that are based on “if user is in the situation that might benefit from this”.
Is it too much hussle to tell students “Go to preferences, type in Bool Tool and enable it?”
I also don’t get what you mean people won’t follow tutorials anymore. When guy says “Search for Node Wrangler and enable it”, viewer can go to extensions, type in Node Wrangler and click install. It’s the same thing. Are changes in names SO confusing that people won’t follow tutorials anymore?
I think people still don’t understand what this change is and get scared of the fact that add-ons aren’t part of Blender anymore.
All previously bundled add-ons are still there. Still in the preferences. You can still search for them and enable them. It takes from my testing maximum 3 seconds downloading them. Workflow is 100% same.
What actually changed:
@dfelinto there are nearly a dozen users expressing identical concerns, a concern that is conspicuously being discussed only by users, not developers. Are the developers planning on addressing this, or is “looking for feedback” in this case meant as “looking for positive feedback only, no concerns will be addressed”?
He replied here in the Beta Feedback thread, about having a bundle addons to download
which I feel can work but not sure
It depends on if you have easy internet access I guess. In a school situation with lots of pubescent pupils it can be quite beneficial to have the classroom computers not connected to the internet. 
I personally think Draise’s idea of pre-enabling the most used bundled addons is a good one.
Previous add-on system was atrocious from both dev and user point of view, dozens of abandoned add-ons shipped with Blender, and those that had maintainers weren’t get called in for fixing bugs, because triaging team did not know who maintained what.
Now each addon is clearly abandoned or has a specific maintainer with separate issue reporting channels. Users can actually reach out to add-on devs.
You still don’t get it and/or aren’t reading what people are saying.
In some educational and commercial environments, Internet Access is DISABLED. So no, it doesn’t take 3 seconds, it takes infinite seconds as it just won’t work.
So it’s no longer a case of grab Blender, install it, tick the addons you need and away you go.
It’s now, grab Blender, install it, work out a way to self host or manage a ‘collection’ of addons that use to be their by default and that all class notes or production workflows have been built around.
To me that sounds like a design flaw. It should have been possible to have a group of addons pre-installed (much like they currently are) but automatically linked back to the Extensions Platform.
That way, for anyone without Internet access, the user experience is basically the same as it is now and everything just works.
For those with Internet access, Blender (either automatically or by user choice) can go and check to see if any default installed addons have since been updated between main Blender releases and do the update.
Then ideally, the first thing that should have been done (even before any Extensions Platform was made/launched) was an audit and community consultation on the status and usefulness of all the addons have have been ‘shipped’ with Blender over the past few years.
I just realised another addon that is being left out in the cold (ie not core), LoopTools.