But did anyone want an omelette? I’m still not on board the omelette train here, myself
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Checking how extensions work in the newer builds, it seems easy enough to get your favorite tools back.
Though there is the concern that with the formally bundled addons now having their maintenance outsourced to the community, there is the chance that tools people have relied on for at least 10 years or more may now end up going belly up with no alternative (especially considering the longtime historical pattern of updating Python without giving much thought to compatibility).
I do hope the BF has a plan to at least ensure the legacy addons stay functional and not resort to a “sucks to be you” mentality if there are no volunteers available (because that would be a good way to generate calls to fork Blender).
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Who was asking for an omelette?
I agree with JohnDow, in asking - what exactly is the goal? What chronic problem for the user is it meant to solve? Blenders third party development is extremely robust and strong, and adds so much power to the user base.
Without the extensions website, it all happened and has been working quite well… If it wasn’t working well, people wouldn’t regularly discuss how great it is in the blender add-on ecosystem.
This new system deprecates (to some degree) how existing things are installed, creates a new way that’s required to provide exactly the same feature (addon) to the user, and has now also removed things from the standard installation.
Yet for all of this, I’ve not determined what the actual user benefit is… other than an official blender website where you can download some of the same things that you could formally download anywhere else.
Feels like we’re in the realm of the Sunk Cost fallacy.
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Many people asked for a centralized extensions platform over the years, and plenty of people reacted positively to the blog post and forum topics. You may not agree, but you can not be genuinely asking this if you made an effort to look?
Many users have said that keeping add-ons updated to the latest version has been difficult. We’ve also very frequently had add-on authors ask about better ways to distribute their add-ons in a more convenient and discoverable way. This stuff has been requested for 15 years.
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It is not that difficult; certainly no more difficult that most any other production software that has a plugin API.
Some of the listings on blender market have had tens of thousands of sales. So distribution is not a large problem; if you have a product that people want, people are finding it…
But I think that’s a bit of an aside. I have indeed read the original blog postings on this and the comment threads. Some of the comments expressed concern, about security and paid addons other related matters…
I didn’t see anything in the blog post that mentioned removing features from the installation, and also burying the method to install legacy add-ons.
On a side note, I did notice a PR which was trying to make it more elegant for blender to understand the difference between an add-on and an extension, and correctly choose the destination install directory so that the user doesn’t have to read header code. So that was nice to see.
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Creating “centralized extensions platform” and removing essential addons from Blender are two entirely different things.
This also has nothing to do with removing essential addons from Blender.
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Hello John. Can you give me a list of essential (bundled with 4.1) add-ons that you want maintained & included in the future? You might answer all of them, but please be specific, so I can know which ones users rely on more
I assumed the former was the omelette, and the latter the broken eggs, in the metaphor that people were using. I was replying to the suggestion that people didn’t ask for the omelette.
Unreal Engine comes with almost a hundred ‘bundled’ addons, extensions, plugins, etc. It can work just fine without them, but… When Epic Games rolled out their “centralized extensions platform” (EGS), they did not break everything by removing all those plugins and they did not force users to redownload them again for no reason. In the words of that ‘metaphor’, they made an ‘omelette’ without breaking any eggs.
These are the ones that I have enabled at all times:
⦁ F2
⦁ Curve Tools
⦁ Extra Objects
⦁ Images as Planes
⦁ Import SVG
⦁ UV Layout
⦁ FBX fomat
⦁ glTF format
⦁ Copy Attributes Menu
⦁ Modifier Tools
⦁ Material Utilities
⦁ Node Presets
⦁ Node Wrangler
⦁ Bool Tool
⦁ Carver
⦁ Cell Fracture
⦁ Scatter Objects
⦁ Rigify
⦁ Tissue
⦁ Loop Tools
⦁ Edit Mesh Tools
PS. Some third-party addons also rely of these and some others and messing with the ‘structure’ breaks compatibility. For examples, one of the most popular free addons ‘Interactive Tools’ rely on F2 (Mesh_F2 module). It won’t work without it. Downloading ‘F2’ from “centralized extensions platform” won’t help because the ‘structure’ is broken and ‘IT’ says: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘mesh_f2’.
PS. Updated the list. I missed two addons.
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UV Layout, FBX, glTF, Import SVG became part of core Blender, so they will still come pre-installed inside Blender and I believe all of them will be enabled by default.
Rest of the add-ons you listed will be still maintained and updated for future Blender versions. Some of them have active maintainers, and those who don’t I will take care of them for basic maintenance. Some Node Wrangler functionality I’m also porting in core Blender, and will probably take care of Bool Tool.
As for installing them, you can download bundle of every add-on in 4.1 and install them at once for every Blender release, or, what I will suggest you do, is you install ones you listed one-by-one from Extensions tab in preferences. Doing that has benefits:
- You will get automatic updates every time we’ll fix a bug for it or add new feature. You won’t need to wait for next Blender release. Because extensions don’t follow release cycle they’ll receive updates whenever they’re needed.
- When you switch to newer Blender version all of those extensions will be automatically transferred to new version when you load settings from previous versions on first startup.
- You won’t have the list populated with add-ons that you don’t use and just take up the space.
- When something is broken you can report it on website, or leave a review and maintainers will see it.
As for the bugs, yes there are bugs now, because extensions were just ported and uploaded on website. We’re testing them one-by-one and fixing what bugs we’ll find that were caused by migration. Remember that we’re still in alpha and things are expected to break, but they’ll be fully ready when stable 4.2 is out.
As for my personal side note, I advise you not use Node Presets and Scatter Object addons anymore. Functionality of the first is natively implemented in Blender as node group assets and there is no need for it anymore (if it’s simplicity you’re after there are other addons that make working with group assets easier), and object scatter is also not needed since custom modifiers can give you that functionality with better UI, performance and much more features. I hope once assets are part of extensions and we can upload scatter node groups there people will depend on those less.
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Yes. True. But was this really meant for the Plugins considered as “core”?
This addresses none of the concerns people have voiced in this thread, though.
As mentioned earlier - blenders Built-In Plugins were maybe not enabled by default but for most users those were considered core/default Blender - the whole updating problem was for all the Plugins that were installed separately and assumed to be out of sync with Blender Releases anyways.
Again: Plugins Bundled with Blender - considered core. Need to be there in ecosystems without Internet. Are considered to be compatible with all same Blender Versions. Are considered safe. Are assumed not to need a separate installer or download.
All other Plugins - Plattform with centralized way to search is super useful and updates are considered important. For ‘external’ plugins it was already assumed that it may need to be upgraded to remain compatible. It came from outside Blender and its release cycle.
If you, as in the core devs, never considered the bundled plugins to be core blender then I am sorry to tell you: This has changed. Users do consider these to be Core Blender, stable and available, as they are always bundled with Blender.
Extensions Plattform - very good and highly apreciated
Removing plugins considered core from there, possibly breaking compatibility with core functionality over the release cycle - Why?
As @JohnDow said - I don’t see why it was necessary to pull the core plugins from Blender for this.
Not to mention that none of this addresses the concerns about much more complicated installations in schools or strict work environments. And that this “one time download bundle” for 4.2 is not solving these concerns. At best it’s ironing over for one last release. An LTS one at that.
Please seriously reconsider if removing very often used Plugins like NodeWrangler, F2 and Rigify really, really, really is the right move and what users want, here.
Again: In a strict work envioronment ths can be seriously problematic considering download and installation rights for Plugins that were up until now considered core.
Blender is not only a “Home User” Program any more. These concerns need to be addressed seriously.
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None of the addons are “removed” in a sense that people are imagining here. As I said before, they’ll still be maintained. When there’s a new Blender release they’ll be updated to that. Bugs will be fixed if they spill (your reports can help that). Just the fact that we were not given “Core” at the front of title doesn’t mean they’ve been abandoned. No need to be scared of that.
They’re just moved outside main registration. And I don’t understand why bundled addons don’t solve the problems as you said? Yes it’s couple more clicks to install them alongside Blender when new version comes out, but is it really that much trouble for educational environments and studios, who are probably already double-checking and validating everything before install?
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Those are not the main concern. Neither mine nor anyone else’s in this thread.
The two problems are:
- Remote install rights and safety
- consequently, possible out of sync versions when installing the addon at a later stage.
As was said multiple times in this thread - nobdy expects that the addons are gone. We would expect them to remain bundled with Blender for install and safety reasons. Again: if it’s bundled with Blender you can expect everybody else to simply have them. You can use them without internet access and download rights. You will have the same base version as everybody else at the time the Blender Version was released. Bundled into official blender they are considered trusted and safe.
Those were the concerns and those were so far not addressed properly.
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I hope this is not Off Topic.
It’s just a matter of either develop Blender or stick to the current limitations.
But why renounce to develop? Because of small internal problems?
If a teacher needs to share some addons he will get used to download them along with Blender; if someone works in a big company (just like me) will adapt its policy to keep using it. Then again, development is what makes Blender stands out from all other DCCs.
I don’t get all these misgivings about this change; do you you really want to renounce this big deal of an improvement? I think many of the resisters still look at the changes he will have to make and don’t see the greater advantages
Extensions go through review when they are added in the portal. Moreover, if the maintainers of the currently bundled extensions are going to be the same as the current ones, and the Extensions portal is an official source of addons by Blender, where is the trust or security issue?
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I was not commenting on that subject, I understand those concerns.
Personally I think we could bundle more add-ons as core. Not all or the majority of them, but the most popular ones.
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I know it’s a sort of a project that should have happened, sooner or later. The concept is great, it would prevent blender from being bloated with addons/extensions some users might not have need. BUT I personally dont think its a good idea to remove addons that were shipped with vanilla blender version. Like, why? What would prevent you from keeping the so-called legacy addons within blender and storing the 4.2+ ones from devs and users on a separate website??? It’s obvious why the users are confused. They dont like the fact that the things that used to be in blender by default are suddenly taken away. And the idea with providing legacy addon zip-package, Ill be honest with you is a total failure. Whats the point with storing additional amount of megabytes on your servers and making user to do a couple of additional clicks to get back the functionality of blender 4.1≤?
The another idea of polishing the code of popular addons and merging into main sounds great, really great. BUT taking into consideration how long it takes for you to develop awesome features and tackle some bugs, I dont think that even some popular extensions like node wrangler will make it this year…
Please, keep at least the legacy addons inside blender, DO NOT TAKE THEM AWAY. And I"ll be more than the sure, the audience will be much more lenient towards your new project, cause you won’t break your principles given.
After all its just my opinion : )
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My list will contain some duplicates of John (my apologies for that, but I’ve been without internet service for the past 13 days and am having to just use my phone… So compare-copy-paste is difficult):
Pose library
Export camera animation
Images as planes
SVG import export
UV layout import export
Curve tools
Extra objects
Icon viewer
Material utilities
F2
Loop tools
Rigify
Node wrangler
Bool tool
Edit mesh tools
Cannot tell if ASE export is an addon or not.
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For the record - my personal list of Plugins that I will always enable in Blender by default:
IsKeyFree
3D Viewport Pie Menus
Material Library
Material Utilities
F2
Loop Tools
Node Arrange
Node Wrangler
Rigify
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Addons that you’re suggesting, are mostly the same and expected. Of course bool tool, node wrangler, images as planes, they’ll all be maintained. Those add-ons are so popular that even if Blender decided to abandon them we’ll still take care of them.
But bundled add-ons also include stuff like Sapling Tree Gen and Paint Palettes. Most of those add-ons were created way before 2.79. They’re ancient and include features that are now part of core Blender. If you look at commit history big chunk of them haven’t been updated in 4+ years. There are add-ons like Material Library that only made sense when geometry nodes and asset browser didn’t exist.
Add to that add-ons like Export Pointcache Format and Export Paper Model that most of you have no need for. There are around 90 addons bundled now, and single user needs around or less than 10 of them (excluding what became core).
For those who have internet access it just makes sense to use extensions instead of install bundle as a zip. You get all new fancy features, as well as clean UI without it being bloated by ancient add-ons you’ll never use. And it’s just couple of clicks basically once in your life per PC, unless you wipe your preferences folder.
And for those who don’t have access to PC, it’s much better if you bundle addons that you need yourself. I also teach in places where they disallow installing things without admin rights, and I’d much prefer if I distribute bunch of useful addons as bundle myself, rather than have students enable random useless ones because it’s there and then I have to clean-up the mess that add-on made to the scene. It’s a bit more work, but if you’re TD or teacher you’re probably doing something similar already, that’s our job.
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