Modeler Pro

A general Blender toolkit with unique features to improve the life of 3D modelers

Most Recent Version: 1.3  (11/23/24- Blender 4.3 update)

Documentation is in the Documentation tab

FEATURES:

• Bevel weight gradients: 
  A unique new feature for blender that enables you to add specific curves with different curvature/noise/size to your bevel weights. Packaged in a very easy to use pie menu for you to hotkey. Just select the edges you want to use this on and make sure to have a bevel modifier set to limit method: weight (note: must have an active edge selected).
• More in-depth tutorial for this in the Documentation tab of this page

Play with the curve types! Use smoothstep curve to have control over the sharpness setting:

• Collections helpers:
  pie menu with lots of different options for quickly adding collections to specific parts of the outliner quickly and no need to manually do this... add collection within a collection, below, or below selection's parent collection, isolate all objects in collection of active selection (without needing to solect all of them)
  

• Toggles pie menu:
  Pie menu for toggling very common modifiers such as the "last" mirror in your stack, arrays, toggling all "union" booleans, all "difference" booleans, toggling bevel modifier + bevel weight (if there are any), etc
  

You also have the ability to "opt out" of the toggle of a specific modifier by adding a suffix of "_off". Adding this makes it so that if for example you toggle all booleans, it will toggle all booleans except for boolean modifiers with a suffix of _off (example name: "booltool_off"). You can do this with the mirror and array modifiers as well. This way you have control over what to toggle on/off. More on Documentation tab.

• Bevel weight pie:
  Pie menu that sets specific bevel weights. Very useful when trying to be precise with your bevel weights and also for high poly meshes where Blender's bevel weight tool starts lagging. 
  
  
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In example below when I set my bevel weights to 0.5, 0.25, and 0.5 all of those edges got automatically saved to the "SELECT weighted edges" so now I can easily select all edges of those bevel weight values

It's also able to read the current bevel weight value (if my tool was used) and then you're able to type in your own custom value. Useful for very precise work!:

Bevel Modifier pie:
New in Modeler Pro 1.3. Pie menu to easily add bevel modifiers. Use scroll wheel to choose how many sides for the bevel modifier. move mouse left and right for how big your bevel. Hit "C" to toggle "clamp overlap" on and off. Each bevel modifier will be named accordingly for easy organization. These will also always be added BELOW the "weighted normal" modifier. Also exclusively if you are running 4.3 and up: Bevel modifier set to bevel weight "crease". This one works with creased edges essentially allowing you to have different bevel weight modifiers.

• Save your bevel modifiers:
  save bevel modifiers to a json file to bring up later or share with a team mate. Currently Blender has no real way of doing this so here it is! There is room for 2 presets and ability to use settings from the N panel. This way you have 3 different bevel modifiers that you always use consistently for you to add quickly! Also ability to pick where you want the bevel modifier to go (last in stack, bevel bevel weight, after weld, after solidify, after geometry node). Read more in the documentation. 

as seen on demo video. sample "Trim" json file provided!:

• Misc:
  There's also a lot of other goodies relating to adjusting multiple bevel modifiers at once including renaming modifiers, adjusting settings but ONLY for bevel modifiers named a specific way etc. 

• Changing specific individual settings:
  such as the bevel shape across all selected meshes. Just show all of the "apply" buttons by toggling the "hide all apply button" checkbox. ALL bevel modifier settings are able to be individually adjusted across MUTLIPLE selected meshes at once:
  
  

• BETTER Primitive geo creation:
  based on bounds of currently selected object. X key to change orientation and mouse wheel to scroll through number of sides. Option to either consider or not consider mirror/array modifiers as part of the bounds.

works in both edit mode and object mode. In edit mode it works based on the face selection bounding box)

• Origin and 3d cursor quick moves: 
  left,right, top, bottom, center, etc. "left" and "right" are correctly set based on the way your viewport is facing the mesh. No need to fiddle with manually adjusting your origin!

pie responds to you rotating the camera around your object (so left and right remain consistent):

Also has button in the pie menu for sending origin to 0,0,0, Origin to 0,0 (0,0,0, but keeps Z value) and origin to current selection's origin.

• Pies for adjusting bevel amount on bevel modifiers:
  Useful for meshes that have a ton of polys and its faster to just do math to the amount (plenty of times where i do 1.5*2 for example). It adjusts amount of all selected meshes and different pies will only affect based on limit method (pie menu for modifier set to bevel weight or angle for example. So if using the "angle" one it won't affect bevel modifiers set to "weight").

• FBX Exporter
  
  
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  Includes features for:
  
  -Prefix and suffixes
  
  
  -Subfolders
  
  
  -Excluding from export meshes set to display as "bounds" and "wireframe" (often the case with cutters/booleans where you don't want them exported
  
  
  -Excluding from export meshes inside collections set to "disabled in render "
  
  -Excluding from export meshes set to "disable in render " for more refined control over what to export. It will exclude these meshes even if they are selected.
  
  -Excluding from "apply modifiers" modifiers with suffix "_off" in their modifier name
  
  
  Export Modes:
  -Parent exporting: Exports with parent's name (+suffix and prefix) and exports children even if not selected
  -Active object: Export with active object's name. Centering works with active object as though it were the parent.
  -Use Name Field: Simpler export that just exports with give name in input field
  
  
  -All of the usual checkboxes that a modeler needs (no other clutter!)
  
  -Move to center:
  Move the parent object to the center (0,0,0) before exporting. If exporting using name field or active object then it will move to (0,0,0) based on the ACTIVE object as though the ACTIVE object were a parent of the selected meshes. If no active mesh is selected then ALL meshes will move to 0,0,0, so you may get meshes stacked on top of each other if you have multiple meshes
  
  
  
  

COMPATIBILITY

This a Blender addon that has been tested to work in the following versions:

3.5 to 4.3

It has not been tested in any other versions but it may work on even older versions than 3.5 if you are still running that.

INSTALL

Install using the Preferences panel and select the "ModelerPro_1_1" zip file.

INSTALLING UPDATES

INCLUDED

- Modeler Pro addon
- Json bevel profile file included with settings seen in the video (trimming edges with a material). Just requires your mesh to have 2 different materials.

NOTES:

- Free updates!

- Price will go UP once It's at version 1.0+ so you are saving money by buying early.

- On the bevel weight gradients "custom" panel if you change the "curve type" then your pie uses that curve type. If you want to have your pie work say in "quadratic" curve type again you need to go into this menu and change it back to quadratic. In a feature update I plan on making this smoother :)

- Contact: hardsurfaceprofessor@gmail.com

DOCUMETANTION:

Hotkeys

This addon does NOT add or replace any hotkeys at all. None. Zero. This addon is meant to be as least intrusive as possible. Hotkeys are added via right clicking on the N panel’s buttons if you wish 🎉

CHANGELOG:

- 8/28/24. Initial release: 0.9 version.

- 9/2/24. Version 0.9.5. Big update:
-increased max primitives' vert count

-Greatly refined origin and 3d cursor movement and pie menu. Now screen space so "left" and "right" are correctly set based on the way your viewport is facing the mesh. Also now has "center right" and "center left"

-added X keypress for changing orientation of the generated primitive (with tooltip help)

-added cone number of sides changing (which was missing before)

9/7: 1.0 BETA.

- Added simple fbx exporter. Note of minor bug: when first using the exporter it may require manual input of export path location (as opposed to the folder button) for the first time, after that the path works as expected every time. Fix upcoming but it’s a rare case with an easy workaround.

-removed wheel input for cube primitive since… there no point there

-general clean up

9/14: 1.0 BETA 2.

- This is the 1.0 release candidate! More testing to be done but 1.0 should be out in about a week give or take.

- ability to undo origin movements with the addon's pie

- added "move to 0,0,0" for origin

- added UI display of how many sides your primitive has when changing with mousewheel

- fixed rare instance of fbx file location not showing correctly when picking it for the exporter.

-added EXPORT MODES for the expoerter. 

Named, Active, and parent based. Active names based on active mesh, and when move to center is checked on it moves meshes as though the active mesh were the parent of the selected meshes and moves to 0,0,0 accordingly.

- added "exclude meshes in collections set to "disabled in render""

- added "exclude applying modifiers with "_off" as a suffix in the modifier name

9/21/2024: 1.1

- OUT OF BETA. Official first major release.

- added move origin to active's origin to the origin pie

- more tool tooltip descriptions and general clean up

- WIP documentation

10/27/2024: 1.2

-Added to origin pie: move to o,o,z. Moves origin to 0,0,0 but keeps Z axis origin location.

-Added icons to origin pie

-added custom bevel weight value: gets current bevel weight value from current selection and then allows you to edit from there.

-Added F9 menu to bevel weight operations so that you can change bevel weight value after the fact for bevel weight quarters pie

11/23/2024: 1.3
-Blender 4.3 update.
-Added bevel modifier pie
-bevel weight pie menu updates