Last minute change to Blender 4.2!

The Blender Foundation has made a pretty unusual move to make a last minute change to the upcoming Blender 4.2. Have a look and see what you think.
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[@ValentinNadolu]

Whenever I see the Blender community getting worked up about some UI/UX update I remember that 3ds Max and Zbrush exist and that people are paying cold hard cash for those UX disasters.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😂 Very good point.

[@blanketparty5259]

Zbrush is hell

[@sadhappy8860]

Blender Launcher is a must at this point. This seems silly. Call it extensions or add-ons but you should pick one. I honestly thought the add-on system was fine. There are many more problems Blender needs to fix before this

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@sadhappy8860 I have to agree on the name choice, not sure that it really matters but trying to differentiate between such a blurred "difference" feels odd. Also agree on there being things I'd rather they focus on.

[@sadhappy8860]

@@ArtisansofVaul I think it's something to do with programming & web development. Like Chrome's "extension". It's part of aligning themselves with the programming zeitgeist. I'm surprised they didn't call it packages like in Python, that would make sense. Whatever blender calls it, stick to one. add-ons was fine. Just seems needlessly nit-picky

[@Th3EpitapH]

naming is sketchy yeah, but I think this is honestly worth their time (provided they're willing to work towards an actually great solution). I've known a lot of beginner blender users who were iffy about extension usage from an explorative standpoint. They'll use one handed down to them in a way they're told to use it, but won't explore with extensions. Cleaning up menu presentation is one of the key steps blender's team can make towards that end, and if they succeed, it makes a lot of functionality accessible for people who wouldn't have accessed it otherwise. That's potentially pretty high value for the effort.

[@craigwall6071]

@@Th3EpitapH They needed a different name because "extensions" includes other things than add-ons. They can be themes, or geometry node rigs, keymaps, addons or asset libraries.

[@O-8-15]

yep

[@estate0007]

Don't forget: When it comes to UI and UX we have to deal with the same organization which has not set Select Objects with left mouse button by default until version 2.8 😁

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@estate0007 😅😅Too true.

[@mrkoddy]

Or when you select object which is parented to a hierarchy it doesn't select the hierarchy itself

[@EmilySmirleGURPS]

The concept appears to really be making the extensions tab a download-only tab, and the add-ons menu be management + the historic installation of legacy add-ons. It's just in a muddled mess of panicky transition 😅

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Agreed

[@mptest7461]

I don't like separating idea of "extensions" and "add-ons" at all. To me they are synonyms (and also plugins) and using naming here is not reflecting the purpose of separation. I prefer having them marked with some column like "provider": Blender | external, with some checkbox or nice icon or even color to highlight either one. And option to filter. But "not like this, not like this". Also installation source (network or disk) should not depend on this separation, either of them should be possible to install directly from network (if provided) and from disk.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@mptest7461 👍🏻 Understandable.

[@enyoc3d]

i don't understand the distinction between "add-on" and "extension" -- seems unnecessarily complicated

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Agreed, unless they make it much clearer

[@swanee]

I think the extensions platform looks wonderful for discoverability and keeping things updated for all the stuff currently on various git repos.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@swanee totally. Being able to update those between the big Blender updates as well is great too.

[@craigwall6071]

Reading the comments I can see many people are still clueless about BF added extensions and the benefits to users. 1. There is great cost to the Foundation to manage the hundreds of millions of times that Blender is downloaded. By keeping extensions as separate, optional downloads they are able to reduce this cost. 2. The system will represent an improvement for users to keep all their addons updated. 3. Extensions allows users to grab goodies besides just addons: asset packs, geometry rigs, keymaps, and themes.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Very good points, thanks for making the,. I really hadn't considered the first point at all. 👌

[@k4x4map46]

would not have known at first lol...glad you're on it for us!!

[@ArtisansofVaul]

No problem at all. 😁👍

[@mr.sandman1217]

Installed 4.2 LTS today, and not all my installed addons from 4.1 transfered over. This was absolutely seamless in prior versions of blender. Now you'll have redownload those addons and retweak any custom settings you have had for those addons. Feels like a step backwatds rather than a improvement, in my opinion.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Thats odd, all the addons I had external to Blender were there, they just needed the tickboxes to activate them ticked again. But I agree on having to set up the custom settings being a real annoyance. I hope this isn't needed for every new install of Blender going forward!

[@mr.sandman1217]

@@ArtisansofVaul I figured out what happened. I have a separate location for my external addons, blender defaults installing addons on the C drive. I have most of my addons on my F drive. I did not get that "copy settings" prompt when I first booted up 4.2, so I had to copy over my start_up and preferences blend files manually to 4.2. Any addons left over in my C drive I had to copy over to my F drive for 4.2 to activate them. Hope this all made sense.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@mr.sandman1217 Thanks so much for reporting back 👌🏼 I'm sure people finding the same issue will really appreciate finding an answer 😁👍🏻

[@AnthonyHortin]

This seems unnecessarily confusing. I didn’t mind the original change, from Addons to Extensions, but having both now, is only going to cause confusion. They’re effectively the same thing but deliberately separating them like this in the UI, is only going to get people wondering what the difference is. I do agree though, that hiding the ‘Install from disk’ option beneath a small dropdown menu, isn’t a great idea. The primary way to install addons, up till now, is by selecting a zip from your computer. Hiding this option, which is still going to be the most used method (at least in the short term), seems like a poor decision.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Agree an all counts. 👍👍

[@Mrflippyfloop]

Very happy to see this change.

[@Mrflippyfloop]

...but agree with your points made.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Cheerd 😁👌🏼

[@chuctanundaspiderbone5407]

If there is a functional distinction between "add-ons" vs "extensions," it is not apparent. As more than one person mentioned below, "add-ons" and extensions," are synonyms. At the minimum, there should be some clue provided as to what the difference is, and why it is important enough to change the user interface. Otherwise, it just looks like adding confusion to complexity. Thanks for your explanation, btw, not sure if I would have figured out the difference, without a ton of plunking around.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@chuctanundaspiderbone5407 Totally agree. I'm not even totally sure if I'm totally correct on the difference, I'm just going off how it appears at this point. For example can extensions be paid for or will they always be free? I'm not totally certain....

[@sespider]

How do I convert a imported SVG from a curve to a mesh??? It use to be incredibly simple and now I can't figure it out!!

[@ChristinaMcKay]

Last night a short was published on the Blender channel here on YT where Dalai talks about this

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I'll have to check it out. Thanks 👍

[@GA-br8wj]

Solutions for problems we did not have before. How many times do you use the preferences menu? Exactly, not many, just keep it simple.

[@NotSoMuchFrankly]

I use the preferences menu lots. This just isn't the change I needed.🙄🤷😒

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I mean I use it quite a lot but I would agree I don't think this is particularly needed.

[@disruptive_innovator]

I'm a little lost as to why they are making this change. Addons are something different than Extensions? As you say ND appearing in both places really is confusing.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

I think the idea is that Extensions have come from Blenders Extension warehouse (extensions.blender.org/) but addons is the joint term for these extensions and other things from places like Blender Market/Gumroad.

[@MarcinPetruszka]

Some steps in the right side, but others are confusing and frustrating like old Siemens phone menu structure. Maybe they'll fix this before release 🤞

[@MarcinPetruszka]

Direction* 🤦‍♂️

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Possibly. Though I would be surprised if it's changed by 4.2 release now.

[@jack1313]

I think they did a lot of work on extensions as a platform and the integration with Blender but did not think of the UI too well during Alpha, sems they really wanted to target this LTS. I will say I'm not sure what they should call it, since "extension" will not just be Addon or Themes but other stuff later, maybe Geo nodes setups ect... And eventually other marketplaces will integrate into Blender, like Blendermarket when you link you're account. Which I've not seem before which I think is cool. I like this much better but like you pointed out, they need to polish the UI more and et more community feed.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Sounds like some good future changes for sure!

[@surfmaster5000]

Unzipping addons into your AppData might be easier than finding this drop down

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@surfmaster5000 true.

[@moominjuice2]

I'm still not entirely sure what is official/unofficial and some projects I like to disable stuff for security. I just want a safe to use area that can update, and an experimental area where indi development can be added or excluded. Beginning to write some of my own tools so hoping none of these changes make it more complex. All feels a bit loose and migrating stuff to new versions needs to be seamless.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@moominjuice2 Seems very reasonable 👍🏻

[@torq21]

Last few years they've had habit of adding new " features " that aren't really welcome. My least favorite of which is the two transform modes, one for using the gizmo and another for tweak mode. There must be something like two people in existence that need this feature and now it's way more confusing and cumbersome to change orientations.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Yeah, if almost feels like some "market research" is missing.

[@PP3D]

I think it's a good idea (for me anyway).

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@PP3D 👍🏻 Good to hear from people liking it.

[@TitusKrakenDesigns]

This will only result in annoyance and further updates, it should be left as it is as people are used to, it makes no sense.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Can't disagree that it seems an unneeded change in comparison to some things.

[@jujuboohoo]

This was requested by a large monthly donor? :) We already have official, community add-on tab and check box to see activated add-on only. They could have just added "paid add-on" tab cuz the rest was perfectly fine.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Haha. No idea if a donor particularly wanted this change. I do think it's a bit neater this way but a clear paid addon tab would be another solution.

[@alexfurer]

Totally agree with your view. This seems half baked… Plus, an option to have startup profiles, to manage addons, in a simple fashion than application templates, would be a better dev time investment.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

👍

[@The-Steve-The]

i only just learned they removed the addons tab in 4.2 in this video and it made me irrationally angry. thank god they changed it back a bit.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@The-Steve-The 👍🏻

[@ChristerAnd]

I think it was a good last call.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

👍🏻 Overall I like the change compared to what it was.

[@juliaalder2007]

You can only love Blender. 😅 They try and change and they hear what the community says. Sometimes things make sense, sometimes not so much like in this case. Unity is a whole different story and often a pain in the butt.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

😅 That's frustrating. I do think it's great they listen and react to feedback so quickly

[@juliaalder2007]

@@ArtisansofVaul You're absolutely right. Thanks for this update. 😊

[@GoddessLunaMoon]

Personally I think this entire redesign is making things worse. When compared to the current way in 4.1 it feels like its making stuff harder by splitting things up and putting them in drop downs for no reason. The only thing I personally would keep from this is the "installed/uninstalled" tabs by default, as that is an amazing qol feature. And I dont know why they're trying to change the name add-on either. Everyone knows already what this means and correct me if i'm wrong, but I dont think new people have issues with this either. If they want to differentiate between the build in add-ons and the ones you have to install then this is not the way forward imo

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@GoddessLunaMoon I'm not really sure the name change is needed either. It will cause confusion for people new to Blender watching old tutorials.

[@horriblypink]

They could have literally just changed the color of the Add Ons that come installed and called it a day

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@horriblypink very true. And a good solution.

[@aphmaujbirdloonawolf2050]

the install thing got remove so its sucks

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@aphmaujbirdloonawolf2050 Install thing?

[@FullCaber]

i am at 4.0 still hihihihi

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Haha. No issue with staying with a version you know you're happy with.

[@kwlxxi4813]

A joke among engeniers, at least in my country, is: "first rule: if it works, don't touch it". The addons menu as worked fine since always.... I don't see the need to change it in these new versions...

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Can't disagree with that logic! 👍

[@korone609]

This started out fine, but just got worse as the video went on. This is the modifier menu all over again. If it isn't broken dont fix it. If it is broken, then take the time to come up with a good solution. Do not break it further in a last second change. I play with new plugins a lot, so I'll be dealing with this menu all the time. A lot less excited for 4.2 now. To be clear, not complaining about the idea of this change or changing the UI, just the poor execution of this particular change.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Totally agree about the modifier menu similarities. And I really don't like the modifier menu either.

[@FirstLast_Nba]

No.1 rule of life: IF ITS NOT BROKEN THEN DONT FIX IT.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

Yep!

[@smittywerbenjj1]

Blender uses semantic versioning, but they do not respect that standard at all. Their version numbers are misleading and irrelevant.

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@smittywerbenjj1 🤷 I'm not sure that matters to me personally but it's interesting to hear from someone who it does. 👍🏻

[@Dmitry2184]

“Bought externally” yeah, right 😏

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@Dmitry2184 Huh? I'm confused what you mean?

[@NotSoMuchFrankly]

Believe it or not, sometimes people buy things.

[@Container-11]

I am not a Blender Nerd. Maybe it would be better first to clear for ALL viewers what is an Extension and what is a addon. Then we can discuss ...😉

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@Container-11 Firstly that's kind of the point... Its making a distinction between two things that don't have much of a distinction. An extension is sometimes free but can be paid for. And addon is from Blender market or Gumroad (which I do say in the video, I don't think you need to be a nerd to understand English) but then the extensions also get put in the addon menu.

[@Container-11]

@@ArtisansofVaul Ok, i don´t need to be a nerd to understand English, but to be an English person would help a lot, but i´am not, sorry 😉 i´am an old German and try to follow .... because in Germany nobody makes such good videos like the English community, like for exampel, you my friend 😂 Sometimes i don´t get it, sorry 🥰

[@ArtisansofVaul]

@@Container-11 👍🏻