15 Best Addons for Blender 2.83 (free and paid)

    Blender has a large number of tools which can be used for creating beautiful 3D works. It has all kind of modeling, texturing, shading, rigging, animating and lighting tools which are necessary for 3D artists. But sometimes these tools are not enough. The artists need more tools in order to get their job done. In these cases artists use addons for blender. For example, if you need to make forest in blender but you do not have the time to model the trees then you can use a tree generator addon. In blender the addons basically lets you manage secondary scripts without any effort which extends blender’s functionality. Addons are proven to be helpful for every 3D artist. Using these addons artists can do their work easily without taking much time. In this article I will talk about 15 blender addons (free and paid). These addons will help you with your 3D workflow.

Free:

1. Easy FX

Easy FX is a free blender addon created by Nils Söderman. This addon is for compositing. It can be used with blender’s built in node based compositor. If you find blender compositing nodes very complicated then this addon will be very helpful for you. This addon allows you to create compositing effects in the image editor. These changes are automatically added to the compositing node network. You can add effects like vignette, colors, filters, lens distortion etc. using this addon. This addon is very easy to use.

2. Animation nodes

Animation nodes is an amazing blender addon. It was developed by Jacques Lucke. This addon basically allows you to animate almost anything inside of blender using nodes. This addon is a bit similar to Houdini. It makes it easy to do mechanical rigs, motion design, and programming. This addon was  basically designed for motion graphics. It gives you access to nodes like number, text, rotation, boolean, mesh, material, sound, animation and more. Animation nodes is an essential tool for blender animators.

3. BLAM

BLAM is camera calibration toolkit for blender. This addon was developed by Per Gantelius. This addon are mainly used for 3D compositing in real background images and VFX. It helps to match blender’s virtual camera position to the original camera position of the image. It has manual and automatic matching tools as well as focal length estimation and camera orientation. The perspective matching is done by blender’s grease pencil strokes. BLAM is an awesome addon for camera matching.

4. BoolTool

BoolTool is a modeling addon for blender. It was developed by Vitor Balbio. This adon is related to Boolean operation in blender. It helps you to create Boolean operations quite easily. Boolean operation is an essential part in hardsurface modeling. Blender’s built in Boolean modifier is good but booltool is way easier. It speeds up your hardsurface modeling workflow. You can peform union, intersection, difference operations by simply pressing hotkeys. This addon is must have for hardsurface modeling.

5. Mantaflow

Mantaflow is a blender addon related to simulation. Mantaflow is a fluid and smoke simulating addon. Blender has built in fluid and smoke simulator but mantaflow can do some advanced stuffs. Fluid and smoke simulation is essential for motion graphics or scene rendering. Mantaflow can create realistic smoke and fluid simulations with more advanced options. It creates physical based simulations. It is more compatible than blender’s built in fluid and smoke simulator. You can create some advanced things such as foam and particles using mantaflow. Overall mantaflow is an amazing tool for fluid and smoke simulations.

6. Archimesh

Archimesh is an addon for blender which is related to architecture. This addon speeds up your architecture workflow. With this addon you don’t have to model every single model you need for your architectural render. This addon provides various architectural 3D models. You can add rooms, doors, windows, kitchen cabinets, shelves, stairs, tile roofs, books, lamps, roller curtain, Japanese curtain etc. This addon adds cycles materials also. This is a great addon for architecture.

Paid:

1. The Grove

The grove is a blender addon used for creating beautiful trees. This addon was developed by Wybren van Keulen. It works like the sapling tree generator addon which is a default addon for blender, however it has improved features and simplified interface which makes it easier to work with. Trees make a nature render complete. This addon can help you with your nature renders. The grove provides 14 different kinds of tree presets such as Alder, Birch, Maple, Oak etc. Though these trees are highly detailed it does not take much time to render them. You can also animate these trees realistically. This is a must have addon for tree generating.

2. Mirage

Mirage is a nature and landscape creating addon for blender. It was developed by Diego Gangl. This can create largescale landscape with easy to understand interface and helpful tools in a very short time. Mirage has landscape creator, tree craetor, easy heightmaps, rocks etc. You can distribute trees, grasses, rocks easily using this addon. Mirage can create low and highpoly rocks in just one click. These rocks have a lot of settings to play with. It also creates materials for trees, rocks, grasses etc. Mirage is a great tool for nature rendering.

3. RetopoFlow

Retopoflow is a retopology addon for blender. This addon was developed by CG Cookie. Retopology is often used by game asset modelers. This is process of decreasing the poly count of a highpoly sculpted model. Retopoflow can make your retopology workflow much easier and faster. This addon has various tools like contours, poly pen, poly strips, patches etc. These tools allow you to do retopology using strokes, filling vertex to vertex, filling large quads etc. This is an amazing tool for sculpting and retopology.

4. Hardops

Hardops is a hardsurface modeling addon for blender. It has some advanced tools for hardsurface modeling. It is a non-destructive hardsurface modeling addon with lots of modifiers. Hardops has a simple and amazing user interface. You can do booleans and bevels very easily with this addon. Hardops has simplified entry system, it works nicely in the 3D view, it has powerful mirroring, dynamic circular array, viewport configuration system, optimized hardsurface workflow etc. Hardops has tools for object, sculpt, sketch etc. It also interacts with lights, cameras, empties, curves etc. This addon is much compatible with hotkeys. It is a fantastic tool for hardsurface modeling.

5. Boxcutter

Boxcutter is a 3D view drawing cutter addon for blender. This tool is also used for hardsurface modeling. Boxcutter is a non-destructive addon. It has multiple cutting tools like cut, slice, inset, join, knife, extract etc. These tools are used for cutting and slicing objects in order to add details to them. Boxcutter has artist friendly user interface. It provides facilities like custom cutter, on the fly edit system, fast cutter, advanced snapping system, self-cut etc. It is also compatible with hotkeys. You can create box, circle, ngons and various custom shapes using boxcutter. This a great tool to have.

6. Flipfluids

Flipfluids is a powerful fluid simulation addon for blender. This addon gives you the ability to create high quality and realistic fluid simulation. Flipfluids is based upon professional fluid simulators like Houdini, Phoenix FD, Bifrost and Mantaflow. This addon is very fast and it has various useful tools. These tools are whitewater effects, high viscosity and surface tension effects, built in mesh generation, fracture modifier support etc. It also has some other very interesting features like you can pause the baking process and easily contained fluids, beginner friendly UI, debugging tools etc. It is a great simulating addon.

7. BPainter

Bpainter is a painting addon for blender. It is like the default texture painting tool of blender but a bit more advanced. It is a layer based texture painting tool with user friendly interface. It has a large number of brush presets. Custom image texture is also very easy to use in this addon. The layersystem gives you a fast and flexible workflow. You can use blending modes with these layers like add, multiply, screen etc. Bpainter has a default and advanced colorpalette and colorpicker. It has other features like adjustment layers, mask layers, stencil texture support etc.

8. Gaffer

Gaffer is a light manager addon created for blender. It was developed by Greg Zaal. It gives you full control on all lights in your scene. It has a very easy and fast workspace. It also helps you adjusting HDRI images. Using this addon you can use advanced lighting options like shadow size, sample count, falloff type etc. Gaffer also has advanced HDRI features. You can adjust HDRI brightness, rotation, warmth etc. without using any nodes. It helps you to light your scene a lot better than blender’s default lighting system. This is an amazing lighting addon for blender.

9. By-Gen

By-gen is a hardsurface modeling addon for blender. This addon was developed by Curtis Holt. It has a lot of non-destructive and advanced modeling tools. By-gen is a very cheap addon. It only costs 1$. It generates or modifies a mesh by using multiple modifiers. You can model organic, mechanical and many other kinds of models using byzen. By-gen has three panels. The first  one is to generate mesh, the second one is to modify mesh and the last one is to apply the modifier stack and purge textures. This is a great and unique modeling addon.

                These are some of my favorite free and paid blender addons. If you have these addons then your 3D workflow will be a lot faster and easier. If I missed some important addons please let me know in the comment box. Share this article to your social media so that other people will be helpful from this. Subscribe to my blog in order to get notified when my next article gets published. Until then, Adiós.