1.11

^2024-11-09

This ís the Blender 4.3 release, and with that, I'm also raising the minimum version to 4.2 LTS now.

Note tool and Grease Pencil v3

One of the major changes in Blender 4.3 is the rewrite of GreasePencil - internally now called v3.
The Modes and Tools pies have been updated to support the new Grease Pencil type in Blender 4.3, and adapt to the API changes accordingly.
You would think Grease Pencil is not a major part of MACHIN3tools - and you would be right - but addressing all the changes still took over a week..

However, that also includes a new tool, because I took this opportunity to add a Notes tool, which allows you to easily add text notes anywhere on your model - useful if you don't work with a tablet, or dislike writing by hand.

Textual notes are not only useful for yourself - as little reminders or ideas with spacial context - but also when working collaboratively of course.

With an active Grease Pencil object in draw mode, the Tools pie now exposes the Brush, Line and Erase tools, as well as quick access to the object's Grease Pencil layers and tint color in other modes.

Tools pie in GreasePencil draw mode

The ToggleAnnotations tool in Blender 4.3 supports toggling layers of Grease Pencil Note objects in 4.3 too now - in addition to regular annotations, thereby creating a consistent 4.2-like experience, and avoiding having to micro-manage Grease Pencil objects.

Align

The Align tool got some last minute updates.

You can now align objects based on the local axes of the active object or the cursor.

Furthermore, bone alignment and inbetween alignment have been updated and now support setting the relative slide distance.

AssetBrowset tools

For assembly assets created with MACHIN3tools, you can now adjust the asset origin afterwards in different ways.

You can also update thumbnails for other asset types now: objects, collections, materials and poses^{I think even actions}.

Finally, when you hold down the ALT key, you can ensure overlays are rendered too, which may be useful when you want an armature to appear on the thumbnail for instance.

FileBrowser tools

The modal tool used to adjust thumbnail sizes in the file- and asset browsers - invoked via 3 by default - has been extended to support the Asset Shelf too now.
As of Blender 4.3, asset shelves are where your brushes for painting, sculpting and grease pencil are accessed from.

Also, in the asset browser, selecting the import method is now also a modal operator, that works similarly as adjusting thumbnail sizes: Hold 4 and move the mouse horizontally.

Save Pie

The Save pie now optionally supports glTF and Better FBX importing and exporting.

Each import/export method can be toggled individually in the addon preferences

Also the Load Next/Previous tools ask for confirmation if the currently open file is unsaved, before prodceeding.

Confirm before loading the next/previous file, while the current file is unsaved

Snapping Pie

In the Snapping pie you can now set snap elements additively, by holding the ALT key.
So for instance, you can enable VERTEX and EDGE snapping at the same time.

A fading label is drawn whenever you pick a Snap Preset to indicate what exactly is enabled at the current time.
Snap elements are also shown at the top of the pie now.

Finally, Grid snapping now uses the CLOSEST target, not MEDIAN.

more

The Material Picker tool can now pick and append materials from assembly assets or collection instancess.

The Focus tool in View Selected mode now ignores array modifiers by default.

The paint and sculpt modes in the Modes pie have been fleshed out some more, and now also show pie buttons for object and edit mesh modes for quick access.

Object and Edit Mesh modes access while in Sculpt mode

Smart Vert now tries to maintain UVs when center- and last-merging.
Smart Edge now supports creasing when invoked via SHIFT + 2
And Smart Face by default now clears modifiers on extracted faces. It now also supports extracting from multiple edit mesh objects at once, and can then optionally join them into a single object too.

As always, there is a complete overview of all the changes in the changelog. Enjoy Blender 4.3 and please support my work, if you haven't already...

All of this documentation is a lot of additional work, and is free.
It eats up a lot of my time and energy, that I'd rather spend developing or making art.

So I hope you appreciate it, and thank you for reading this far.

1.10.1

^2024-08-05

This is mostly a bug fix release, but not completely.

The general focus is on linked assets/data, which is now handled much better, and again less invasive than if you were to use Blender's native make_local operator, which requires the type='ALL' arg to make linked instance collections accessible. That however would make all linked data in the blend file local, which you probably want to avoid.

The MakeLocal tool in MACHIN3tools is more targeted to the selection only, and in addition to object data, handles instance_collection data too.

See the changelog for complete list of changes and fixes.

1.10

^2024-08-01

This is the Blender 4.2 update. This took considerably more time than I initially thought it would, hence the delay and being 2 weeks "late". But I hope you agree the delay was worth the wait, and that this is a good one.

The 2 major areas of focus in this release are Eevee Next in Blender 4.2, and the AssetBrowser tools which have been completely reworked, offering a simpler UX and better results.

AssetBrowser tools

Assembly Asset creation is easier than ever. MACHIN3tools will look through an entire parent-child hierarchy and find all relevnt objects in it as well as all mod objects. So your selection for creating the asset can be very simple and doesn't have to encompass all objects.

The asset origin/empty can now by placed in the Cursor's location too. Furthermore, the thumbnail can now be updated after the asset is created, and this can be done from the 3D view, or the asset browser.

Internally, when an asset is created all the original objects are now being duplicated and so left untouched. This allows me to make some decisions so you don't have to. Duplicated asset objects are then placed in a dedicated asset collection, which itself will be placed in a main _Assets collection. Both will be linked to the scene, but hidden from the viewlayer.

Doing it like this is more transparent and allows you to see what is going on. That said, if you want to make a change to an asset it may still be wise to just remove it and re-create it from the original objects instead.

Asset collection objects are no longer being moved to the world origin now, and instead the instance_offset is used.

Remove Assembly or entire Asset

There is a removal tool now, that allows you to remove an assembly asset, and its instance collection in one go, as long as it doesn't have any other users anymore. For local assets, so those stored in the very file you are creating them in, you can also remove the entire asset and any potential instances in one go. Naturally this will remove the asset from the asset browser.

Thumbnail Rendering has been overhauled completely. MACHIN3tools will find your asset wherever it is on the 3D view, and frame it perfectly for you. As before, viewport rendering is used, so you can create thumbnails from SOLID shading, or using Eevee in MATERIAL or RENDERED shading. Camera views are supported now, so you can even use effects like Depth of Field, if you want. Furthermore, Cycles is supported as well now, if you chose is as the renderer, in which case still rendering is used automatically.

Disassembling an asset, so making the individual asset objects accessible, will now ensure objects and collections are local (not linked), and do so recursively. If objects in the asset are Rigid Bodies, the necessary setup to make that work again will be performed after disassembly.

The sidebar panels in both the 3D view and the asset browser will now expose the instance collection name of assembly assets.

asset collection names in the sidebar panels

The sidebar panel will also list child assets, that are part of a bigger asset of assets, and will do so recursively in a tree-like fashion, should there be multiple levels.

Thumbnail Scaling + Local Library Bookmark

Scaling thumbnails in the AssetBrowser - keymapped to 3 by default, is now a modal operator, meaning you can interactively scale thubmails by moving the mouse. This works in the FileBrowser too, and you can disable it in the addon prefs for the FileBrowsser tools, should you prefer the legacy behavior which cycled through different sizes.

The Bookmarks Bar now comes with a new pseudo-bookmark for the local library, called Current File. It's keymapped to ALT + ^ by default.

the Current File pseudo bookmark at the beginning of the asset bookmarks bar

Note, that unlike the regular bookmarks, you can not assign a catalog to it, nor a thumbnail size. So instead switching to this bookmark will select the most used catalog in the file, and auto-scale the thumbnails based on the asset browser dimensions. This should ensure that at least something is shown at all, because unfortunately its impossible to select the All catalog via the API.

Shading Pie (Eevee Next)

Eevee Next is here, brings realtime raytracing, and along with that a completely different way to set things up and tweak it all.

As in previous version you can quickly adjust the Eevee settings (which are used in MATERIAL shading too), even when your render engine is set to Cycles. Also as before you have preset buttons at the top of the Eevee box, that allow you to quickly change multiple settings at once. Refer to the tooltips for details.

New in Blender 4.2 are user-presets, which can be set from the Properties editor in the Raytracing panel. If you set some of these up for yourself, the Shading Pie will find and expose them for you.

Now, your first reaction to this Eevee Next panel may be being overwhelmed, but I assure you it's easier and more efficient than the alternative. The only things you will want to adjust in 99% of the cases are 1. the presets and 2. the thickness value, which is why I chose to highlight it in red.

Also, if you look at it with the None preset chosen you will see it's not so bad :)

To make life easier, I have combined 6 settings into 3 "multi-props". Adjusting Thickness, Resolution, or Precision (Quality) will adjust the natively independent Screen-Trace and Fast GI settings of the same name at the same time.

For example, changing resolution from 1:2 to 1:4, will change both the Screen-Trace resolution and the Fast GI resolution accordingly.

I've also exposed the Shadow and AO passes directly for quick access. Shadow in particular can be very cool to get a very graphic visual read of a scene or design.

Bloom

Eevee Next no longer has a Bloom toggle. But the Shading Pie still does!

In Blender 4.2, the Bloom toggle of the Shading Pie will set up Bloom via the compositor for you, or toggle it, if it has been set up already. I've thrown in a Dispersion toggle on top of it too. What's cool is, not only are these effects shown and adjustable in realtime, they also work just the same in Cycles!

Volumes

Similarly, there is no Volume toggle in native Blender, but there is on in the Shading Pie!

It does two things, because volumes exist in either of 2 ways:

1. a global world volume set up by nodes in your world
2. volume objects

Without volume objects being present, turning on Volume rendering will setup a basic world volume for you, and expose some basic settings in the pie. With volume objects being present, their visibility will be toggled by adjusting viewport filtering. This way individual object visibility states are never touched and changed.

If you have volume objects present, but in addition you also want to add a world volume, you can do so by SHIFT clicking on the volume toggle.

World

More World properties are being exposed now.

Blender 4.2 introduced the ability to toggle world shadows, so shadows dynamically created from HDRIs! Cool. You can even soften them by increasing the Sun Angle (size).

Also, if you use the scene world, MACHIN3tools will check your world node setup and look for a number of generic property names, such as Rotation or Rotation Z, which - if found - allows you to rotate your world directly from the pie. Also also, if you use the EasyHDRI addon, then know that its node groups are supported too.

Views Pie

Next, the Views Pie has received some updates.

When using Smart Cam to create a new camera from the view, by default the view will now be perfectly matched, which is achieved by matching the render resolution ratio to the view's ratio. Also a camera sensor width of 72 is used, while the current viewport's Field of View is brought over to the camera.

When in camera view, you can now easily toggle Depth of Field, and set it up by either adjusting the focus distance directly, by picking an existing focus object, or by creating a new focus empty. Also, when you come back to an existing DoF setup at a later point, you can easily select the focus object from the pie, even it it's hidden or not in local view.

A fading HUD has been added to the SmartCam and Next/Prev Cam tools too, for additional hotness user feedback.

Save Pie

For the Save Pie's export options, you can now define root export folders per-file type in the addon preferences.

Beyond that, Purging and Cleaning out the file have both been improved. In 4.2 you can now get a Purge Preview by invoking the tool with the SHIFT mod key. Purging will also remove empty collections now, which Blender's native tool doesn't do, unless they are also unlinked.

Tools Pie

Due to popular demand, I have brought back the BoxCutter and Hardops integrations, as well as the Surface Draw tool (previously in the Modes pie).

The Tools pie with everything enabled

There have been improvements for annotations too. Surface placement can now be set via buttons instead of a list, and there is a new tool to toggle annotation visibility across all layers.

This visibility toggle will take into account manually hidden annotation layers, and will only re-enable those, that have been previously visible too.

Blender 4.2 Pie Menu Conflicts

Blender 4.2 sculptors using the Shading and/or Views pies may encounter a keymap conflict due to new native Page Up/Down keymaps for visibility filtering in Sculpt mode.

If such a conflict is detected, MACHIN3tools will let you know about it and expose the keymap items, so you can remap them.

more

The Material Picker now supports multiple open 3D views and AssetBrowsers^{which is just this simple note here, but took me an entire fucking weekend}

Also, the Group tool will now indicate and highlight ungroupable objects among the selection, which are those that already are parented so something other than a group empty. The Outliner in Group mode will now truly only show group empties, if you make use of group auto-naming with prefix and/or suffix.

Smart Edge can now connect non-manifold vert selections, creating non-manifold edges.

Last but not least, the Modes Pie has added Guide mesh < > Final Mesh Editor support, for convenient Dual Mesh Edit mode toggling.

As always, for a complete list of all changes, check out the changelog.^{biggest one yet I think}

Thanks for your patience and support. Enjoy Blender 4.2. It seems like an amazing release.

1.9

^2024-05-23

Material Picker

This update brings QOL^{Quality of Life} improvements to the Material Picker tool, that makes it a game changer IMO. At the core of this is the new RIGHTMOUSE keymap for it.

Since this likely conflicts with many users' keymap for the context menu, I leave RIGHTMOUSE disabled by default, but I recommend you enable it to try it. There is more info below on how you can make it work for you.

You can enable it in two ways:

1. in the General tab of the MACHIN3tools addon preferences

2. in the Keymaps tab of the MACHIN3tools addon preferences

Material Picker Context

Note, that even when enabled, RIGHTMOUSE will only ever invoke the Material Picker, if you are in a shading mode, that displays materials, such as MATERIAL or RENDERED shading. It can also invoke in SOLID shading, but only if your have MATERIAL chosen as the color_type.

Furthermore, if you don't have a Shader Editor or Asset Browser in the current workspace, while also not having any object or face selection, then Material Picker will also not invoke.

In these cases RIGHTMOUSE will be passed through to Blender and do what it would otherwise do, like open the context menu, if that is in your keymap.

What does Material Picker actually do?

Three things:

1. It picks a material for you to work on in the Shader Editor directly from the 3D view, without you having to select an object and finding the correct material from the object's material stack.
2. It assigns a material to any object or face selection, by picking it from another object in the 3D view.
3. It assigns a material from the asset browser to multiple objects through individual sequential picks, or all at once.

This is how that works:

Asset Browser tools

With the Filebrowser tools active, you can now cycle the display_type in the Assetbrowser as well via the 2 key, again just like in the Filebrowser. You can also cycle the display_type using a dedicated button in the Assetbrowser header, which is most suitable for horizontal layouts however.

Changing the display_type is recognized and rembered by the ToggleRegion tool, as well as by the Assetbrowser bookmarks.

more

As always, there is more in this release, so please refer to the changelog for a complete list of changes.

Spring Sale

Blendermarket has a Spring Sale going on right now, and you can get all of my addons for 25% off.

1.8

^2024-03-22

Pricing and MACHIN3tools Prime

With this recent batch of addon updates for Blender 4.1, I've decided to bump the price across most of them a little, and MACHIN3tools is no exception. The Standard variation - previously free on gumroad and github, and sold for $1 on Blender Market, is now history.

Prime is now the new base version of MACHIN3tools, and contains ~95% of the feature set compared to DeusEx. On gumroad - where payment was voluntary - unfortunately less than 1% chose to donate or buy DeusEx, and after 6 years, that has simply proven unsustainable. Most people don't realize this, but MACHIN3tools is actually my biggest addon in terms of code base, just after DECALmachine, but before MESHmachine. And so it needs to start carrying its own weight now.

I think the new MACHIN3tools pricing - $5 for Prime, $15 for DeusEx - is more than fair and reasonable in the current market environment and with the value that is offered.

These pricing changes aim to counter a general downtrend in revenue, in face of rising living and so development costs, that I have observed for over a year now. The reasons for this are not clear, but it's likely a mix of multiple:

• post-COVID era
• reaching market saturation?
• increased competition
• lack of new products and social media activity - while my main focus remains on getting HyperCursor out
• gen AI and waning interest in Blender?
• inflation
• layoffs
• the one we don't talk about

For now, I still want to avoid charging for updates, but it may be inevitable. I'll see how it goes.

If you found MACHIN3tools Standard useful in the past, I would appreciate it if you would consider upgrading to Prime or even DeusEx now.

Thanks for your support, now on to the 1.8 update...

Auto Smooth

This release brings Blender 4.1 support, which introduced changes to (Auto)Smooth behavior. I think this change is very welcome, as it gets rid of some odd legacy Blender behavior.

The Shading Pie and its Smooth, Flat and AutoSmooth tools are most affected by this, but I'm happy to say that its look and UX are unchanged compared to previous versions.

Autosmooth in 4.1 looks behaves identical to how it looks in previous Blender versions

Under the hood, instead of toggling the mesh.use_auto_snmooth property, MACHIN3tools will add or remove the new geo node Smooth by Angle modifier to enable or disable Auto Smooth. MACHIN3tools will automatically add/remove the mod on unselected-but-instanced objects too.

Personally I like, that you no longer even need to use Auto Smooth for sharp edges to be considered, and neither when using custom normals. Both just work, as you would expect on any smooth shaded mesh object. Beyond that I like, that we can auto-smooth CURVE objects now, and that it plays well with boolean mods on objects with custom normals, which previously would have their shading messed up.

Asset Browser Bookmarks

If you appreciate the Asset Browser, you will love Asset Browser Bookmarks.

Bookmarks bar in Asset Browser header, and Library - Catalog shown next to it

You can jump to any saved bookmark by clicking on it or by using the ALT + 1 to ÀLT + 0 keymaps. You can save any Library + Catalog combination by SHIFT clicking on a number/bookmark. Thumbnail size is saved too by the way. You can clear a bookmark by CTRL clicking on it.

This is so convenient to use, and gets even better in combination with the Toggle Region tool, which can pop up an asset browser area at the top and bottom of your 3d view at any time.

The bookmarks bar is of course of less use in a vertical setup:

However, the shortcuts to recall a bookmark still work without issue. So if you prefer to work like that, you will just have to temporarily widen the asset browser area, and save your bookmarks while you can see it, then shrink it down again.

Integrated Updater

I've added a custom updater to the addon preferences. It should be very straight forward to use:

1. Unfold it from the top of the MACHIN3tools preferences.
2. Select the MACHIN3tools zip file to install, if it's in your home dir or Downloads folder, it will be found automatically.
3. Verify it's the version you want, and Quit Blender to install the update, otherwise remove it.

3 steps to update: unfold, pick update .zip, quit Blender

more

Please see the changelog for a complete list of all changes in MACHIN3tools 1.8.

And if you are actually still reading, note that I have a Patreon account, and HyperCursor is in pre-release with a lot more info and details about that coming soon.

1.7

DeusEx ❤

The highlight of this release in terms of new features are definitely the advancements of the empty based grouping feature, and in particular group poses for MACHIN3tools DeusEx.

The TransformGroup tool has been overhauled, it's HUD has been fleshed out, and the UX has been optimized, and also supports previewing and recalling the poses of the active group empty.

fully fleshed out HUD, with the second pose being previewed

Poses are simply stored group empty transformations. The focus here, and for now, is only the rotation component^{Translation may come in future}.

Scrolling the mouse wheel while the TransformGroup tool is active, allows for easy pose selection and preview, while recalling a selected pose is done simply by releasing the left mouse button. if you want to skip recalling a pose, while having one previewed - perhaps to compare to the current rotation to it - you can finish the tool with the Space key.

There is also a new tool dedicated to setting up group gizmos directly from the 3D view, instead of doing it from the sidebar. It conveniently supports view-based axis toggling using the TAB key, so you don't even have to know which rotational axis (in terms of local X,Y or Z) you want to have a gizmo for. Just align your view and press TAB to toggle the most aligned of the 3 axes.

All a group empty's poses, are also shown in the sidebar panel. Here they can be renamed, sorted, recalled, and removed.

the updated sidebar panel with pose information, even while gizmos are hidden

New in 1.7 is also the idea of BatchPoses. They are simply individual poses across different group empties in the same group hierarchy, that are related to eachother. They share a unique name in are indicated using the 🔗 icon. You can create them using the SetBatchPose tool, which will create a pose of the current group empty rotations for the currently active empty, and all empties below it in the hierarchy.

Single- and BatchPoses can be renamed by double clicking on them in the pose list. Recalling a BatchPose will recall each individual pose of the batch. By default only going down the hierarchy from the active group empty, but optionally also going up. Individual poses can also be temporarily unlinked from the rest of the batch.

I think this is all very exciting stuff, and I'm looking forward to hear your feedback!

Addon Conflicts + Blender Crashes

Over the past months a few users and developers reported conflicts with other addons. These would present themselves as slow performance, such as when rotating a group, or even Blender crashes. In particular ZenUV and ZenSets, as well as GridModeller, Archipack and NodeTreeStore were affected.

These issues should now be resolved, by delaying execution of handler logic to a later, safer state. Thanks to Alex^ZenUV and Stephen^Archipack for your help and suggestions, and thanks to kushiro^GridModeller for his patience with this too :)

Select Hierarchy

Select Hierarchy now supports selecting a parent-child hierarchy up as well. I've added a fading HUD, which is used to indicate if the top or bottom of a hierarchy is reached, and optionally if there are hidden parents or children left.

Selecting up and down the hierarchy until the top and bottom of the hierarchy is reached

This tool aims to fully replace Blender's native Select Parent/Child tools, and comes with additional features, such as the ability to unhide children and parents, including recursively.

Seleciing down, then up, then reaching top with hidden parent, selecting further up with unhide feature, and finally recursively selecting down and unhiding

Toggle Region

Toggle Region now works in all node editors and in the Image/UV editor, to toggle either the tool bar or the side bar with a single T key.

Toggle tool bar or sidebar in node editor via single T keymap

Shading Pie

The BevelShader toggle has been improved and will in Blender 4 also connect to the Cout Normal inputs. Furthermore it now works for DECALmachien panel decals as well. Conveniently, adjusting the bevel with on the panel decal's parent object, will automatically set it for the panel decal as well.

Bevel Shader on DECALmachine's panel decals, with different per-object width modulations

Finally, the Cycles box now allows toggling of an object's shadow caster and holdout props.

Shadow Catcher toggle for Active Object in Cycles box of the Shading Pie

more

And as always, for a comprehensive list of all changes, please see the changelog.

1.6

This is the Blender 4.0 compatibility release.

Toggle Region

Besides a number of tweaks and fixes, MACHIN3tools 1.6 adds the new Toggle Region tool. It - via a single T keymap - allows you to toggle the Toolbar, Sidebar and 2 Asset Browsers (or one Asset Shelf and one Asset Browser) per-3D view.

More interesting than the shelf however, is the ability to toggle a new asset browser area at the top or bottom of the 3D view. Almost all the tweaks to the layout of the asset browser you can make, are then remembered when closing the asset browser, and restored when opening it again.

See the changelog for a full list of changes.

1.5

Blender 3.6 - a new LTS release is releasing, and it finally allows for the complete removal of the legacy bgl module.

Beyond the bgl removal, there are a few smaller tweaks, such the ability to have the Material Picker show up based on the view's shading.type, not just based workspace name. Modal HUDs have been improved and now respect the system UI scaling, and timer based modals are now extremely reliable and not longer suffer from occasional speed ups.

See the changelog for a list of all changes

1.4.1

A tiny bugfix release to fix Cursor and Origin to edge alignment. Sorry.

1.4

Like the previous 1.3 this release is full of various additions and improvements to simplify your life.

Please see the changelog for the full list of changes.

1.3

This release brings a nunmber of quality of life improvements, some fixes, and continued HyperCursor integration. HyperCursor is in pre-release on Patreon since Christmas Eve.

See the changelog for details.

Happy New Year!

1.2

Version 1.2 mostly fixes some issues, but it also add the SelectHierarchy tool, expands on the previously revamped object axes drawing with the Shading Pie, and extends the object import/export options of the Save Pie.

Select Hierarchy

Select Hierarchy is a simple tool to effectively select the children of any object in the selection.

Save Pie - import/export

You can now import/export .usd files from the Save Pie, in addition to .obj and .fbx. All three object types can now also be toggle from the addon preferences.

Furthermore, .obj import/export now also supports the new experimental importer/exporter, once you disable the Wavefront OBJ format addon.

.usd files can now be imported/exported and all 3 formats can be toggled in the addon prefs

Shading Pie - draw object axes

The object axes for the active or any object with the Axes toggle set, can now be drawn in screen space, thereby enforcing a fixed size independent on an object's location in 3d space.

axes drawn in screen space will always appear at the same size

With Cycles as the renderer and the viewport in Render mode, you can now also enabled Denoising from the Shading Pie.

more

Checkout the changelog for a list of all the additions, changes and fixes in 1.2.

1.1

This update brings a number of improvements across the board.

The biggest change is easily the introduction of a modal frontend for the Mirror tool, which enables flick mirroring akin to flick symmetrize in MESHmachine.

Another useful change is the ability to easily create assets, without them being located in the world origin. The empty for the collection instance, is now automatically positioned at the averaged location of the selected objects, and offset to the floor. Alternatively you can position it just averaged, or at the world origin (previous behavior).

DeusEx users should know, that the Group Transform tool now supports auto-keying, which can be initiated using the K key.

Furthermore, there's support for the new Hair/Curve sculpting from the Modes Pie, and the object axes display from the Shading Pie has been completely reworked, making it much more usable.

Oh, the Workspace Pie can now be completely customized from the addon prefs.

For details on all changes, please see the changelog.

1.0.2

The tiniest of bugfix releases. It just avoids light visibility/renderability synching, if the render tools aren't actually enabled. And it fixes a few typos brought to my attention by an awesome Chinese translator.

1.0.1

A small, quick bugfix release. It turned out the AlignRelative tool in the standard version was out of sync (and not recent) with the DeusEx version. That is fixed now.

Also, the CreateAssemblyAsset tool had some issues on Windows, where the generated thumbnail could potentially not be saved. The thumbnail is now (temporarily) stored in the addon folder, and assigned to the asset automatically.

1.0

6 years in the making

Work on MACHIN3tools has been going on fairly continuously for almost 6 years now. And what a time it has been.

I've switched to Blender 2.77 (from Modo) in spring 2016, when I saw amazing things happening in its addon ecosytem. I was blown away by HardOps, RetopoFlow and Wazou's pie menus in particular. And I have never looked back since. I had started learning Python at the very beginning of 2016. Around summer, I started exploring Blender's API, which lead to a loose collection of various separate scripts. Towards the end of the year I've put them on github. under the name MACHIN3tools following the tradition of Looptools, Edgetools and MiraTools.

Towards the end of 2018, When Blender 2.80 became increasingly usable, ~6 months before its release, I had a good reason and opportunity to bring them all together in a single, modular, customizable package which was the 0.3 release.

28 releases later and we are here now - 1.0

My thanks go out to everyone who has come along for the ride, everyone who has offered feedback, encouragement and support. Thank you so much! And my deepest gratitude goes to those, who have inspired me, artistically and technically.

Blender is in great shape with the recent 3.1 release, and I feel so is MACHIN3tools 1.0. I'm happy what it has become, and I hope you will find it as useful as I do.

Documentation

Version 1.0 is now fully documented - well kind of. It's not on the level of the DECALmachine and MESHmachine docs, due to MACHIN3tools being mostly free, but the Deus Ex version and recently Patreon^{Thanks Guys and Girls!} has allowed me to finally spend a few weeks on documenting.

Every tool and every pie menu, that you can activate in the addon preferences, has its own entry in the navbar to the left, and I'd invite you to explore this. If you have specific questions about anything in the docs, that you feel is unclear or lacking, feel free to ask for more information and I'll try to expand on it.

Groups

Groups were added in the beginning of 2021 and have quickly become one of my favourite features of MACHIN3tools. I use them for everything now. So it's about time they are documented too.

Align Relative

1.0 brings a new Align tool, that can be extremely useful in some situations.

Asset Browser

Blender's new Asset Browser is fantastic. Let's make it more useful. A big thank you to Rachel Frick for the BoxBot inspiration.

Render

In preparation for this release, and as a content source, I have allowed myself to do some personal design work again, which resulted in a few Render tools. These tools are a direct, albeit delayed response to friction in my rendering workflow, that I encountered with the Humanoid Mecha.

Punch It

Punch It is finally here in Deus Ex. Although a simple version is also available in the Standard version.

More

Check out the changelog for more additions and changes.

0.10

This is an unplanned release, adding only the Assemble Collection tool, which is accessed from the Modes Pie, while a Collection Instance is selected.

This is especially useful for Collection Instance Assets, which is currently the only way to use the Asset Browser with Object Assemblies.

box bot design inspired by Rachel Frick

This supports linked and appended collection instance assets. It supports empty hierarchies and so MACHIN3tools' groups. And it also supports DECALmachine's Decal backups and MESHmachine's Stashes.

Oh, I also have a Patreon account now, where I will do pre-releases of upcoming addons, and where I share blend files, if I manage to find time for art. So if you are interested in further supporting my work, that would be a good way to do it. It is very much appreciated! Thank you for considering!

0.9

This release touches on a number of areas, so there should be something for everybody here.

ScreenCast

The biggest addition is clearly the ScreenCast tool - accessed from the Save Pie. It is - like most things I do - primarily driven by my own needs, but I think others will also appreciate it.

The focus of this tool is not on screen casting the keys a user presses, but the tools that are actually run - whether they are called via shortcut or from a menu. This includes a history of the last 12 (adjustable) operators.

I find this is much more important - and I imagine it's much more useful to new users - when watching somebody else working. Custom shortcuts are huge in 3D apps, and people shouldn't obsess about what key was pressed at a specific time.

ScreenCast tool at the bottom left, Screencast Keys addon (custom fork) at the bottom right

That said, if you have the Screencast Keys addon enabled, the MACHIN3tools ScreenCast tool will enable it, so both can run in parallel. Note, that they won't always be in sync. Not every tool will be called via a shortcut, and not every key press will call a tool.

Save Pie

In addition to the ScreenCast tool, there's another addition to the Save Pie: The ReloadLinkedLibraries tool.

* Thanks to TitusLVR for this contribution!*

Snapping Pie

The Snapping Pie now comes in 2 layouts, with the new one having the option for Absolute Grid Snapping. You can switch between the two directly from the pie itself, or from the addon preferences.

the two layouts - one with grid snapping - can be toggled using the button at the top right

Collection Pie

You can now add and move objects to collections, while in local/focus mode. Yep.

Smart Vert

Smart Vert now supports CENTER merging (SHIFT + 1) edge and face selections. Edges will be merged per sequence (connected edges), and faces per island (connected faces).

Similarly Smart Vert now also supports LAST merging (1) edge(sequences) and face(islands) selections. Note however that edge and face selections won't have a LAST(active) vertice. Instead the mouse is used to roughly point at the vert you want to merge to.

In SlideExtend mode (SHIFT + ALT + 1) you can now enable the Flatten option using the F key. This means you can skip using MESHmachine's Flatten tool right after, if you want to create a planar face at the end.

SlideExtend snapping has been updated to use a more generalized approach, initially developed for HyperCursor(unreleased). The UX remains unchanged.

Smart Edge

With this version SmartEdge not only supports selection conversion (2) to Bounds/Region as it used to do, but also selecting Adjacent Edges or Faces. As with Bounds/Region, the initial selection type determines the result. An Edge Selection will be turned into a Face Selection, and a Face Selection will be turned into an Edge Selection.^{The latter is also possible natively by CTRL switching to Face mode!}

In previous versions you could use SmartEdge via SHIFt + 2 to toggle edge selections Sharp. Now you can alternatively also create bevel-mod-based Chamfers and Korean Bevels, using the same shortcut.

Filebrowser tools

There's a new filebrowser tool mapped to 3 to cycle through thumbnail sizes. Toggle Hidden Files has been remapped to 4 accordingly.

Toggle Sorting 1, Toggle Display 2 and Cycle Thumbnails 3

HUD prefs

In the addon preferences, you can now adjust the size of text drawn by various tools with HeadUpDisplays, such as Clean Up, Clipping Toggle, Transform Edge Constrained, Focus, Group, Material Picker, Surface Slide and the Tools Pie.

For tools with fading HUDs you can adjust the fade time accordingly.

And if you want lines drawn by SmartVert: SlideExtend to be anti-aliased, you need to enable Use Legacy Line Smoothing in the View3D section.

more

There's more, and you can check it out in the changelog.

0.8

Deus Ex

MACHIN3tools has always been about simple tools to supplement, tweak, improve or fix Blender behavior and usability. Simple in terms of usability, but also implementation.

Despite considerable development time spent on the entire tool and menu set over the years, it has always been free¹, and that won't change.

However, version 0.8 introduces the Edge Constrained Transform. And while this tool is simple to use, it's implementation is far more complex than any other tool in MACHIN3tools. It's more complex than almost all MESHmachine and DECALmachine tools.

It's a tool, that in terms of development effort could have gone into MESHmachine, but it doesn't really fit into that tool set, and it's too basic in terms of usability. It could be it's own addon, but that seems inconvenient for me and you.

That's why I feel like it's warranted to introduce a low-priced-but-paid-nonetheless MACHIN3tools version called Deus Ex. For now, the only difference to the Standard version is the additional Edge Constrained Transform tool. In future this may change. Since this tool required the implementation of a rotation and scale transformation tool from the ground up, it opens up a number of transform related opportunities in regards to where this could be taken.

Standard

A new addition in 0.8 is the ToggleSmooth tool, which on a key press² turns a flat shaded object into a smooth shaded object. It supports two workflows - Korean Bevel and SubD (if a subd mod is present), works in edit mode and supports multi-object selections in object mode.

* Korean Bevel Smoothing, by default Overlays are toggled as well*

* SubD Smoothing of a single mesh, and entire groups, by default Overlays are not changed*

The Cleanup tool, now features a fading HUD, informing you what, if any, geometry has been removed.

Finally, SmartVert's SlideExtend feature has been enhanced twofold, which you can see demoed in this tweet.

1. You can now slide/extend from edge mode, in which case the mouse position is used to determine, which vert - so which side of an edge - is extend.
2. Edge snapping has been supported since version 0.5. Now you can snap to faces as well. Note, that snapping here works for all edit mesh objects.

Check out the changelog for details on all changes.

Thanks to everyone who has supported MACHIN3tools in the past, may it be through comments, suggestions, recommendations, ratings or donations. I appreciate it, and hope you can consider supporting the Deus Ex version too.