Blender Plugins

https://github.com/  Place to get plugins for blender.

Great Videos describing the plugins you add on in BLender

GitHub - agmmnn/awesome-blender: 🪐 A curated list of awesome Blender addons, tools, tutorials; and 3D resources for everyone.

THis list has everything you could think of for blender.

Plugins that Help your workflow

Power save.  Allows you to save easily, and adds incremental numbers so you know the latest one. Must have Plugins

https://github.com/elfnor/blender_auto_save_on_render -  so a buddy lost work because blender doesn’t automatically save the project before it renders - it should thats a great way to make sure the render matches the images.  So this is a good plugin.

Node Wrangler Learn the shortcuts of node wrangler. In add ons find node wrangler and click on documentation for short cuts.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.91/addons/node/node_wrangler.html

Lighting

https://github.com/eliemichel/LilySurfaceScraper   --  importing texture maps very easy.  Also does ies lights.Must have Plugins

https://ieslibrary.com/  Great for adding in lights that you find in real life. (like wall lights, incandescent or fluorescent)Must have Plugins

Tri-Lighting  Allows you to add three lights all pointing to an empty (in lightwave a null)  Must have Plugins

Modeling

Must have Plugins

Kitops plugin adds a node group that is really  nice and simple to do several things like grunge on the decal.

His video is good.  watch and then download kit ops.  Then watch again  as you do that in blender. free decals are so so but you can add your own.

Sci Fi decal set Kpack for blender and Kit Ops (gumroad.com) Must have Plugins

Blender Multi-channel UV Decals - YouTube Kit ops tutorial Must have Plugins

KitOps (kit-ops.com) Free 400 sci fi kit bashing kpack for free.

Animation

Get animation nodes for motion then view thisTutorial: Animation Nodes Letter Wiggle (blenderdiplom.com) Must have Plugins

Seems like a very powerful node system. Free plugin All the videos says this node is great for motion effects .

Plugins that need further investigation

https://www.blendermarket.com/products/fluent  Fluent seems like a really good plugin to model.  Maybe I'll review this plugin.

Home · gregzaal/Gaffer Wiki · GitHub   I only tested this one out a little bit, it wasn't immediatly obvious how helpful it was

for lights.  One feature that is good is click the light and an object and click the active button and it points the light at the object.  Helpful.    Its located in the side panel in view.\

Good Plugins that 2.91 blender has but are turned off by default

Simply turn these on in preferences under add ons.

Extra Lights,    Has a few extra lights that you can add

Extra Objects  Has a few extra objects that you can add. 

Camera Rigs  THis plug in sounds good in theory, but I have to read the docs.  

Copy attributes menu, Dynamic Brush Menu, Dynamic Context Menu, MOdifier Tools, 

Dynamic SKy   Ecellent automatic sky settings for different times of the day.

Material Library:This plugin is like presets for nodes, Only thing is there are no thumb nails and slow.  Must Have Plugin

Also it acts weird when applying the material to more than one object.  You have to Make a new surface

And in the Material Utilities apply material to active to be able to use the same material but make tweaks to noise or color.

Material Utilities.This has good shortcuts on the right mouse button click menu. Must Have Plugin

Node Wrangler I think this is on by default.  You should learn the shortcuts like shift control Click on the bsdf shader.  If you select a folder with all the images labeled normal, color, bump etc.  It will automatically apply them as nodes with geometry and mapping nodes.  LIly shader is one step above this though.   Must Have Plugin

Object Align Tools. (haven't used it yet so I’m not sure what this does.)

3d view stored views.  (I like the idea of this plugin, if your in view and like the view, click on new camera and automatically add a camera. You can add several. 

Archimesh  make a house quick

Archipack  Make a house quick   Add in windows, doors etc

Ant landscape is for making landscapes.  It’s ok I guess Not sure what else you could use.

Turnaroundcamera is good for making a turntable animation easily. (haven't tried)

BoolTool is good for boolean operations in a convenient place on the side view Must Have Plugin