Just a quick note that we are entering a long holiday week-end, so several devs are already ‘off-duty’ since yesterday. No worries, your concerns are not beeing ignored, and all feedback will be taken into account when the team is back to work next week. 
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Just a quickie, unless I’m doing something wrong which may be the case cause the new “extension” tab is kinda confusing, how do I install an add-on that is purchased from places like Blender Market?
I’m assuming it’s the buried function of “Install Legacy Add-on.”
Why is this option buried in pulldowns and why is it called Legacy? That phrasing alludes to someone installing something old and incompatible.
As not to throw out concerns without a possible resolution… I know all add-ons are still “add-ons” but could the ones you have to load manually just be called “add-ons” and the ones you are getting from the Blender depository be called “extension” with their respective download buttons?
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Earlier discussion indicated that the location of that command is placed as to discourage people from using it.
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Are markets like Blender Market hoping to do an auto update type feature with a depository, as I see there is a place to point to alternate file locations?
I’ve no idea what interest BlenderMarket many have expressed. Personally, I won’t be using any auto update feature, so not something I’ve wondered about. I’ll continue to read the release notes for add-ons that get updates, and decide on a per-case basis if I actually want to download and manually update it, just I’ve always done.
All it takes is for one bad line of code - unintentional or otherwise - to break an addon, or who knows what else. So I never want to install anything that’s crucial to production the moment it appears online.
Plus, code that can access blender, my OS, my files, and connect to the internet? Thanks, no.
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That is actually a very good point. Addons so far also have been very much on a trust basis but with direct access to a separate repository and autoupdates Blender pretty much removed the safety per default.
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I’m here just to add my voice that node wrangler and rigify need to be either kept core addon or even integrated into blender (for node wrangler that is).
Those are core functionnality that the whole cumminity use and tutorial maker have shed tears of salt for every time they had to say “go to edit - preference - addon - type node wrangler and activate it”, i think the conversation should not be if node wrangler is bundled with blender but how integrated it should be.
Rigify is basically the standard of sharing “default” rigs and it’s widely used by the blender studio. Isn’t the goal of the blender studio to battle test the software so that you can get good feedback instead of the noise the community tend to make ? Even them use intensively rigify so again the conversation should be “how integrated it should be”.
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If addon is accessing Internet or OS it will be documented in permissions. And for updates addon isn’t accessing internet, Blender is.
You have point about auto-updates, I don’t do that as well. But, it’s good that we’re notified when there is an update so we don’t miss it still
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Blender Studio is using CloudRig, which was modified version of Rigify, but now is separate add-on. Studios do not tend to use public add-ons and always have their add-on built around their needs. That’s why Rigify isn’t a part of core Blender and is built as add-on
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This isn’t just a matter of what studios do. It seems like what is done in terms of blender ux can float between what studios need, and what others need, on a continual basis depending on which way is most convenient to make the argument…
Dalai said earlier (paraphrased) “Rigify not being included because it is not the only auto-rigging solution that exists for blender.”
It is certainly the only free solution that I can think of that was also created by blender, and distributed with blender, and is referenced and taught by countless tutorials.
I would submit that rigify and node tools are far more generally used, than niche add-ons that involve VR… Yet somehow VR meet the cut.
Back when I was a new user, I even found it confusing when trying to use nodes, or rigging, and everyone kept referring to features that I couldn’t find in the software. I’ve never understood why there were checkboxes for these things in the first place instead of having them naturally included in the installation.
Other add-ons such as F2, mesh tools, loop tools, extra objects, etc… Same thing.
This new paradigm had the potential to improve this situation somehow, but it looks like it has gone in the opposite direction. Now there are multiple ways to install add-ons, or extensions, and you need to know the difference. It crucially relies on the user doing eval on header information, which the average user doesn’t give a damn about.
Discussions about ux for installing add-on versus extension was brought up weeks ago, and from what I gather it was not improved… And one of these options is still hidden in a menu.
Further, blender is now going to include add-ons that apparently cannot be turned off. The method I read about which involves hiding it in the interface with extra code, seems like the weirdest hack… Based on other rules regarding code quality and standards, I can’t believe this sort of hack is even allowed to be a part of the basic foundation.
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We certainly don’t. 
Where do these statements come from, really? Honest question.
Is there a usage statistic about Blender and the Addons and how many studios use what and what size they are? Cause that would probably help the whole decision a lot.
I know we are a small team in a bigger company and don’t have the manpower or need to create complex rigging addons. Rigify does all we need. And it’s an official Blender addon, i.e. trusted.
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Not really, I used Blender in studio capacity. Studios will use whatever necessary, writing their own tools is only done when it is necessary.
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You say this with a lot of confidence- what sources do you have for this? What studios are you aware of that do this?
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That’s a bit of an abstraction of the actual facts.
CloudRig was a feature set of Rigify, as in the modular parts that make up the rigging (an IK Leg, a spine chain, etc) that are included by default with Rigify, the Studios CloudRig was their version of it.
Said feature set didn’t work without Rigify, it had to be a part of Blender for CloudRig to work.
It is only now, as of Blender 4.1, that for whatever reason, a feature set isn’t enough and the Studio has taken their feature set, along with the base Rigify code and basically created their own complete ‘personal Rigify’ addon.
So now we have another rigging addon (insert that cartoon about Standards+1).
Prior to this, the Blender Studio actually used another public addon, BlendRig, but they dropped that as well. I wonder how long CloudRig will last.
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I have to echo this. Where are you getting your data on how people use addons? These statements don’t reflect any experiences I’ve seen. Is there data/telemetry reflecting this?
Here are my experiences. I am a generalist indie modeler that works in a close community of generalist modelers. I consider myself a power user and have been involved in bug reporting/triaging, especially in the rendering/oneAPI space, and occasionally make code/addon contributions, so I have at least some experience going back some time using Blender, since 2.4x.
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Rigify is a de-facto Blender feature, not a separate addon. The number of rigging tutorials that use and refer to Rigify eclipses every other rigging framework. CloudRig and Blenrig and other similar free addons are second tier at best–no offense to the developers–with respect to the amount of community attention they get.
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Stock Rigify is THE most common rig I see in indie models, followed by fully custom rigs in a distant second place and then Auto-Rig Pro rigs in third place. Claiming that Rigify is not used in stock form is…incorrect.
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Most beginner and intermediate level shading tutorials either mention Node Wrangler and tell you to use it, or guide you to enabling it. This is one of the first addons I enable when I set up a fresh Blender setup. I would argue this is even more useful than Rigify to have enabled by default, but I spend more time in the shader editor than rigging.
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F2 is similarly very common in modeling and topology tutorials.
I can’t think of any other addons that are so ubiquitous to the point of being de-facto standards. I know no ill intent is happening here, but it almost feels comically like you’ve managed to pick everyone’s favorite 3 dogs to kick out of the blue. I urge you to look more closely at how these addons are used.
Put another way, I’ve never seen people disabling these plugins once enabled, and I don’t recall many people disliking the functionality they add. For the most part, they’re seamless.
If these addons are not up to blender code standards, that seems like an issue that should be solved rather than moving them to a place where they will eventually languish. Perhaps they were never part of blender core, but at this point, users are expecting them to be there.
These should really be core features.
Thanks for your consideration.
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And the issue might be the standards.
Or, as one other addon developer pointed out, the code ‘solution’ maybe hacky, but that’s only because Blender doesn’t currently provide a non-hacky way to code it.
On a side note, I really hope the creators/current maintainers of Rigify/Node Wrangler, etc are aware or have been pointed to this thread to see just how beloved their little addons are.
UPDATE
So a question, is this a one off just for the Blender 4.2 release or come 4.3 or 5.0, etc will an updated ‘Legacy Bundle’ also be provided? And by updated I mean any changes/bug fixes, etc that have been applied to the addons between releases will be included as part of the Bundle for each new Blender release?
If the above is true, then instead of making a separate 4MB download file each time, why not just included it as part of the default Blender download like it is now?
Note: I had to add the text above to this post, since the system won’t let me post another reply (limit of 3 per thread for a new user).
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I updated the post with the following session. We will need to find a place for this on the download page, as well as the daily build. Meanwhile people should be able to test it already though:
Legacy Add-ons Bundle
As part of Blender 4.2 download, there will be an option to download a separate package with all the non-core add-ons before they were moved to the extensions platform.
- Download the Legacy Add-ons Bundle.
- Preferences > Extensions >
⌄> Install Legacy Add-on - Install the entire .zip file as one.
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I don’t quite understand the need for that unwanted change? To alienate as many users as possible? To ruin everyone’s workflow yet again? To break addons compatibility because ‘essential modules’ that they rely on are not included anymore or were modified? What exactly is the goal?
Sorry for my frustration, but I was writing a huge bug report about numerous regression and bugs just to realize that almost everything is ‘broken’ because you broke it with this change. Now I have to do it all over again and sort things out (actual bugs vs. missing addons).
I find this situation quite ironic. Blender developers like to promote ‘non-destructive workflow’, yet for some reason they introduce disruptive changes in the most destructive way possible. Removing ‘auto smooth’ is a perfect examples of that. It ruined the workflow, broke almost every addon that relied on it and corrupted a ton of scenes by adding unnecessary double modifiers. Even months later users are still dealing with the aftermath.
Given some of the recent and upcoming changes, it seems like Blender development is moving in some weird direction.
«All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others» (c) George Orwell
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Gotta break eggs to make an omelette.