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"Literally everything you need" except for Boxcutter, Hardops, Atmosphere, and the other $200 in add-ons you need to buy to really be productive in Blender.

mkaic 5y ago
Maybe for a very specific workflow, but you don't need paid addons to be productive in general. I've put together quite a few massive projects quickly in Blender without spending a cent -- I'm sure those addons are extremely time saving for the specific use cases they're intended for, but vanilla Blender does have everything you need to get into (and even do professionally) 3D
- packetslave 5y ago
  That's fair. The problem is that Blender is very much a 'jack-of-all-trades' application. It tries to do everything from modeling to sculpting to texture painting to particle systems to rendering... that's something like 3-4 different commercial applications. If someone is doing hard surface modelling in Blender, I would be shocked if they didn't have Hardops and Boxcutter (and MACHIN3Tools, but that's free). If they're doing environments or characters, maybe not (although auto-rig pro for character work is magic).
  - mkaic 5y ago
    Totally agree. Blender does feel a little thinly-spread at times. In being ultra-flexible it's also not quite fully featured in many of its workflows. For someone like me, who just does generalist and VFX work, it's fantastic, but I could totally see where it might be lacking for a specialized application like hard-surface modeling.
aikah 5y ago
Nah, I never used any of these addons although I know what they do, so they are far from essential. I use "Sverchock" for procedural modelling and "Animation Nodes" for procedural animation on the other hand both are free. Furthermore, the basic Blender distribution ships with a tons of free addons at first place. Now should Blender improve their topology tools? Of course and I have no doubt with all the grants Blender foundation got that they will.

mkaic 5y ago

Maybe for a very specific workflow, but you don't need paid addons to be productive in general. I've put together quite a few massive projects quickly in Blender without spending a cent -- I'm sure those addons are extremely time saving for the specific use cases they're intended for, but vanilla Blender does have everything you need to get into (and even do professionally) 3D

packetslave 5y ago
That's fair. The problem is that Blender is very much a 'jack-of-all-trades' application. It tries to do everything from modeling to sculpting to texture painting to particle systems to rendering... that's something like 3-4 different commercial applications. If someone is doing hard surface modelling in Blender, I would be shocked if they didn't have Hardops and Boxcutter (and MACHIN3Tools, but that's free). If they're doing environments or characters, maybe not (although auto-rig pro for character work is magic).
- mkaic 5y ago
  Totally agree. Blender does feel a little thinly-spread at times. In being ultra-flexible it's also not quite fully featured in many of its workflows. For someone like me, who just does generalist and VFX work, it's fantastic, but I could totally see where it might be lacking for a specialized application like hard-surface modeling.

aikah 5y ago

Nah, I never used any of these addons although I know what they do, so they are far from essential. I use "Sverchock" for procedural modelling and "Animation Nodes" for procedural animation on the other hand both are free. Furthermore, the basic Blender distribution ships with a tons of free addons at first place. Now should Blender improve their topology tools? Of course and I have no doubt with all the grants Blender foundation got that they will.