Is there a file size limit when submitting add-ons for the extension platform? We are working on an add-on that has multiple libraries distributed with it, the final size of add-on is less than 70MB, it would be better if we avoid installing them remotely, given this is another security concern.
Anyone using Blender for cosplay design, foam patterning, or sewing patterning, uses this addon. I would bet thatâs a much larger user base than youâd think. Iâm aware of many professional cosplayers that use Blender
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Iâve tested it. Addons are there⌠disabled⌠all of them. Blender doesnât ârememberâ which one was enabled i.e. you have to go through the list and manually enable those you used in the previous Blender version. Otherwise you get a bunch of errors like: Menu âVIEW3D_MT_copypopupâ not found.
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Just want to raise my hand again and say that the idea of a repository that notifies you of Blender core add-ons updates is great and the streamlining of the core Blender program is wonderful too. I just hope that the Blender Foundation understands that not every developer is going to host their add-on in the repository and instead choose to utilize places like Blender Market and Gum Road.
With that said, I hope that the installation of purchased add-ons is simpler (single button next to all the other like before) and not labeled legacy, which once again sounds like something going away or out of date.
The term âLegacyâ is constantly used throughout Blender to signify old and no longer supported functions and entire features sets. 
I like the overall direction of the new setup, just concerned about Blender Foundationâs view towards paid add-ons.
Thanks!
Edit: if Iâm doing things wrong to load add-ons this maybe a red flag. Learning Simulations or Geo nodes inside Blender should be a learning process and take time. Loading a simple Add-on should not have me asking, âif Iâm doing this correctly.â
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Itâs confusing, but there are actually two separate things here. There is a new way of packaging add-ons, which works for both install from disk and install from repository. Once add-ons on Blender Market and similar are updated to use this new packaging method, they will not be called âlegacyâ in the user interface, regardless of how they were installed.
For the most part users should not have to be aware of the distinction between packaging methods, there is work going on to improve that.
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Adding to that I would also drop term âLegacyâ from UI. Users donât need to know about internal matters of add-ons for a Blender version in which they just work. Itâs important only for add-on maintainers. Dropping that word can alleviate part of anxiety
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Awesome! Glad to hear that there are still tweaks needed to include outside markets with the simplicity of the repository, and that itâs in the works. This is pretty much my only gripe on the matter, (no promises more concerns wonât arise )
Carry on.
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Joseph is a Nightwing cosplayer confirmed. 
Honestly, I keep going back and forth on this issue. On the one hand, I agree that not having a bunch of add-ons you are never going to use bundled by default is a good idea, especially for those of us who have several versions of Blender on their machine for whatever reason. And I get the impression that what Nick is trying to explain isnât what people are imaging, no matter how clear he tries to be.
However this is a major paradigm shift that is going to catch most users off guard (always assume the majority donât read any of the blog posts or watch any âwhatâs newâ videos), and I doubt many will be appreciative of having to take extra effort to download things they didnât have to before, even if it does result in less bloat. People are inherently lazy. JohnDowâs initial post on the subject, where he was about to make bug reports because things were missing, suggests itâs not as obvious and straightforward to someone who hasnât realised there is a change as it could be, so that definitely requires some work. The entire idea also feels âoffâ to me somehow in a way that other changes Iâve not quite been on board with didnât, but thatâs hardly a helpful metric, and as I canât quantify it it doesnât really hold weight in the discussion, so Iâm staying mostly out of it.
Nick, looks like you are bending over backwards more than anyone trying to make this work as a concept. Even if Iâm still uncertain about the whole thing, the effort is appreciated.
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As it happens with all changes, they come with an initial difficulty that is to be expected. I can see the greater picture though and i think in the long run this will be for the best.
I would like to add an opinion about the âImages as planesâ add-on. Why is this not part of main Blender? Its code has to be so tiny and at the same time it is so helpful and an essential time saver. The same exact functionality exists in other software too (BlackMagic Fusion). It should be a standard Blender option i think.
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Thatâs another point against this system- a good concept is intuitive and stands on its own. This concept has bred confusion and can only stand with rigorous defense- defense that while thoughtful and thorough, still fails to successfully address the raised concerns. It seems that this idea works on paper, but paper testing didnât account for the edge cases being brought up, and itâs not doing so well upon exposure to those edge cases. This system badly needs further impact testing and reporting
The possibility of adding back âImages as Planesâ came up in a recent meeting. It was removed because the internal implementation of the âSetup Corner Pinâ option depends on some fairly ugly use of depsgraph handlers & drivers to âwatchâ objects.
Iâll check on removing this option and add the functionality to Blender, we could even make it part of Blender, no need for it to be an add-on.
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People might have once said the same thing about 3D in general, and home computing, and the automobile, ect⌠Is it fair to the developers to drag them through this game every time a workflow change happens?
I get there might be a slight concern about requiring an internet connection, but then again to optionally interface with an online database is now all but standard even in FOSS. Even smaller FOSS projects like Minetest does this kind of interfacing and automatic updating. If you keep up with buildbot builds or are active in bug reporting for instance, how do you do that without an internet connection at least somewhere?
My feedback on UX/UI is not always a matter of how it affects me personally. Yes, I normally have an internet connection, download new builds constantly, and have done coding on addons and core source. And thereâs no IT dept controlling my access.
Itâs not always about what I am able to manage to navigate, but whether or not a particular system/feature/procedure looks sensible and acceptably complete.
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Iâm not John but here are the list of addons that are 1. Bundled with Blender 4.1 and 2. Not enabled by default that I use regularly and how often I use them:
- Node Wrangler (daily/indispensable)
- F2 (often/important)
- Loop Tools (often/important)
- Curve Tools (often/important)
- Import Images As Planes (rarely)
I personally donât use Rigify but that is only because I never put in the time to learn it; I see it so often with other artistsâ assets that I would put it in the indispensable category above.
I do have the following enabled but I rarely use them:
- Extra Objects
- Bolt Factory
- Is Key Free
I stand by my assertion that Rigify, Node Wrangler, and F2 are the tools I see every day in other artistsâ assets and in YouTube tutorials and other learning resources. Import Images as Planes is also very nice to have.
I also wanted to add: I donât mind the idea of a central repository for Blender addons, as long as we can still install bundles offline, but I think the above three at the least should remain bundled with Blender and possibly enabled by default. I recommend that any addons from the Extension store should be downloadable from the web and installable offline for restricted access environments like corporate networks, schools, etc.
Bonus thought: at my workplace, some common repositories are mirrored and vetted by information security (think internal Ubuntu mirrors for example). If possible, making it easy for institutions to do the same with the Extension platform would ease the transition.
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I think itâs also important enough to note that 90% of what I do with Node Wrangler is the quick insert shortcuts like Control-Shift-T to add an image texture and mapping node. Or whatever it is, muscle memory is not helping right now 
If some common operations like that could make it into Blender it would lessen my dependency on it immensely. I imagine I only use like 20% of it at most.
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The thing for me seriously is just that with this there will be absolutely no fallback to an expected feature set. No matter why, how or where - if you cannnot, for whatever reason, access the internet or donât have any rights to download or simply forgot to download an addon or whatever ⌠from then on Blender will be functionally incomplete to any version before. And only if you have internet, download and access rights can this be remedied.
No matter how some of you are bending backwards to make it sound like it should have been like this all along. Without any replacements for even just the absolutely most used addons like Rigify this will become a problem in some cases.
I would argue that there should either be a Blender version that includes a snapshot of all standard Addons as a complete download.
On top ,or at least in replacement, of that internet connection / updates could simply be used for update notifications on existing bundled plugins instead of a required new download.
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I actually highlighted this issue in a post before:
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 âshippedâ with Blender over the past few years.
Really that process would have started about 6 months ago, in which case by now it would be sorted and most of the current issues negated.
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Absolutely this - 100%
Postpone the outsourcing of addons to after this LTS release and Blender Core Devs have an entire year to better sort out which addons to include and if there are actual transistional pains to the whole process.
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Here are the notes of my daily sync with Campbell. The following part is intended for this thread, copied here for convenience:
Feedbacks
- There seem to be mostly three kinds of feedback regarding the addons-core changes:
- People are concerned about long term maintaince of extensions.
- People want to work 100% offline.
- People want a way to pre-install Blender with add-ons/extensions for a quicker setup.
The two last topics are been actively considered. See the notes about âOffline Modeâ and âOut of the box experienceâ respectively. Those are not new topics, but they have simply not being priorited at first. The feedbacks have been very helpful to make the use cases more clear and get them prioritized and fleshed out.
The topic about long term maintaince of extensions vs core-add-ons is a complex one. On one hand it is based on assumptions about the future, and often missing on some aspects such as:
- Mostly no add-on has been added to Blender in the past 5 years. The exceptions are the ones created/maintained by a core developer.
- Add-ons which shipped with Blender didnât get as much maintaince as people may expect.
- There are plenty of add-ons which people donât even know they miss, just because they never got shipped with Blender.
With the âout of the box experienceâ tackled, (and part of this is people being able to bundle their favourite extensions), I think this discussion will be less relevant.
On the other hand âŚ
âBlender doesnât require add-ons to workâ. That has always being one of the mantras of the development team. However if we are honest about it, there are plenty of functionalities which only exists as add-ons at the moment, which could have been made âcoreâ.
There are simple case (image as planes), not so simple ones (node wrangler), and really complicated ones (rigify).
The reasons vary. There was never a need (until now?) to address the simple cases if they were bundled with Blender anyways. But even for thte simple ones it is time consuming to make these decisions (what should become core?) and even raise the code quality or the usability to match Blenderâs. So it boils down to a mix of prioritization, needs and pure simple inertia (a powerful force on its own).
So while I believe the extensions platform will be a big new chapter on Blenderâs community history, the Blender development team is fully aware that we need to be sharp on what should still be made core (or shipped with Blender, one way or another).
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Thanks for addressing the concerns. I personally donât have a âhorse in this raceâ currently, but I sympathize with the needs that many mentioned (being from a third world country, up until ~2013 I hadnât have access to the internet at home and my parents still donât have -and I know many people that still donât have a reliable connection-), so I appreciate those concerns were taken into account.