Why Use Blender Addons?
For most of us, Blender addons, paid or not, are a big part of using Blender. They are not necessary (especially for beginners), but they are a way of adding features for the specific areas you use most in Blender.
What is The Best Paid Blender Addon?
The best Blender addons depend on the person, since everyone has different needs and uses different parts of Blender. This list simply encapsulates some of the best addons overall. Chances are that some of these will not be a fit for you and some of them will be, so think twice before you buy any of them.
Why Get Paid Addons?
When purchase a paid addon, the money goes to supporting the creators in the development of the project, if you do not want to or are not ready to pay for addons, check out this list of free blender addons.
How do I Install Addons?
Installation is obviously an important part of using any addons, here’s how to install them:
- Download the addon from online (do not unpack the .zip file)
- Open Blender, go to Edit > Preferences > Addons
- click the install button at the top right, navigate to the downloads folder and select the file
- Finally select the check box on the addon to enable it and you are ready to go!
Note
The Addons are in no particular order, because there is no single “best” addon out there.
Retopoflow 3 – Retopology Toolkit For Blender
$86
Made by the well known Blender YouTube Channel CGCookie, Retopoflow is the ultimate Retopology addon for Blender. What is retopology? When you use a messy method to create a 3D model, such as destructive modifiers, photo scanning or sculpting it leaves you with a horrible looking wireframe known as a topology.
For animations it is necessary to retopologize the model, cleaning the scrambled mesh into organized quads, if done right, retopology will preserve the detail in areas where it is necessary and purge the extra vertices it doesn’t need.
Retopoflow 3 is for anyone who:
- Sculpts
- Photoscans and wants a smaller, clean file
- Uses decimate modifiers and is tired of their computer smoking due to large unidentifiable alien objects scattered throughout their scenes
Retopoflow does it all inside Blender. If you are a sculptor then you NEED to do retopology, but if Retopoflow is too expensive for you right now, then try using Instant Meshes it is an external retopology app, that is less convenient and is missing many features, but it will do the job until you are ready to upgrade.
Auto-Rig Pro
$19.50+
With Auto-Rig Pro, you can rig your character to be animation or pose ready in less than a minute. It is very intuitive and includes many options for IK Rigging and the ability to customize for whatever creature you want.
Auto-Rig Pro also includes presets for Unity and Unreal Engine, saving you a big hassle and meaning you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues or anything, just export right into your game!
Auto-Rig Pro is for anyone who:
- Is making an animation and needs better rigs
- Creates characters and wants to pose them for renders
- Is working on a game and customizing characters
As an alternative to Auto-Rig Pro, you can use the Mixamo auto-rig, which does an decent job with humanoid characters and comes with an addon for more features. Or you can watch a rigging tutorial if you don’t know how to already.
Hard Ops / Boxcutter Ultimate Bundle
$38
This is a bundle of two great modelling addons, Hard Ops and Box Cutter:
Hard Ops is a Hard Surface toolkit for Blender aimed at the enhancement of workflows concerning hard surface and boolean behavior. It also includes Sculpting, Mirroring and Rendering tools as well.
Boxcutter is a Blender plugin for concept design utilizing on screen drawing and hotkeys. The purpose of boxcutter is to cut via drawing. It’s a re-approach of the boolean workflow with concepting and speed / ease of use in mind.
Hard Ops / Box Cutter Ultimate Bundle is for anyone who:
- Does a lot of hard surface modelling (spaceships, scifi and machines etc.)
The free alternative to the Hard Ops / Boxcutter Ultimate Bundle is to use the native modeling system and to setup your booleans manually.
Serpens
$15
Serpens is personally my favorite addon. Created by Joshua Knauber to make the creation of all Blender addons WAY easier. Serpens uses nodes, but works seamlessly with python scripts as well.
Say there is some function you want a shortcut for, and there are no addons out there for it. Using Serpens you can whip up a quick addon in less than an hour and potentially save loads of time.
You can also sell your own paid Blender addons created in serpens, so if you have built something for yourself that you think others would find useful, you can simply wrap it up and sell it for a couple bucks (or give it away for free).
It also has an active discord, where help can be obtained, and as the community grows support will become even easier.
Serpens is for anyone who:
- Wants to improve their Blender experience by creating the features that they are missing
- Would like to create and sell their own addons
- Already makes addons, but is tired of the messy UI problems and wants a simpler way, with programming still available when needed.
The Grass Essentials
$44
Made by Blender Guru, Creator of the infamous Donut Tutorial The Grass Essentials is the best asset pack for making realistic flora terrain available. It includes 15 different grass species and 15 other ground cover options like dead leaves and weeds.
It has tons of variations for each different grass species, and also includes all the tools necessary to generate the foliage right from the Blender toolbar.
The Grass Essentials is for anyone who:
- Finds the default hair particle system way too slow
- Needs a realistic ground solution
- Does Architectural Visualization (Arch-Vis)
If you don’t want to buy the Grass Essentials Pack, my favourite tutorial to create similar results is by CGGeek, it’s called Create Realistic Grass in Blender 2.8 in 15 minutes, but can still be replicated in 3.0
Botaniq Tree & Grass Addon
$49+
Another asset pack addon, Botaniq includes a wide variety of shrubs, plants, vines, flowers and trees. It is a great -almost necessary- buy for anyone doing arch-vis work, ending your constant hunt for free vegetation packs, which are usually pretty junky.
Though the grass variations and quality are lesser than The Grass Essentials, they are only a small part of the addon which includes hundreds of other nature assets. The lite version ($49) includes 275 models and the full version ($129) includes 618 models.
Just the sheer amount of models is super impressive, but also the fact that you can add the models to your scenes in a tidy and organized way makes it a must for Arch-Vis, realism and general Blendering.
If you are not sure if you want it yet, then you can check out their trial version for $1.
Botaniq is for anyone who:
- Makes outdoor scenes
- Does Arch-Vis
- Likes mushrooms
The free alternative to Botaniq is making your own nature with Blender built in addons and using the free BagaPie addon to scatter it over your terrain.
Bpainter V2.0
$39.99
If you would like to texture paint right in Blender so your workflow is less spread out, then BPainter may be a worthwhile purchase for you.
It offers a lot of tools in convenient places making painting quicker and more feature rich.
BPainter is for anyone who:
- Wants to texture in Blender
- Wants a second option painting for really quick sessions that you don’t want to open substance or Mudbox for.
The free alternative to BPainter is the native Blender texture painting setup, it is less user friendly and a bit lacking, but it can still be used and with enough customizing it can work pretty well for you.
Extreme PBR Nexus
$89
Extreme PBR Nexus is an asset addon containing almost 2000 materials, which are all (obviously) PBR. It also includes some features for mixing materials, like the worn edges setting or the ability to texture paint one material over another.
Their library is almost 200GB, but you only have download the assets that you want to.
Extreme PBR Nexus is for anyone who:
- Does concept art and wants a quick texture option
- Wants a huge subscription free texture library
- Wants an “in Blender” option for adding textures
Free alternatives to Extreme PBR Nexus can be found in this article: Best Websites for Free Textures for Blender if LilySurfaceScraper is compatible with 3.0, then you can download that addon and import textures from most of those websites right into Blender.
FLIP Fluids
$76
Blender has recently changed it’s simulation system to FLIP Fluids, the same engine that this this addon uses. The main difference is that this addon has been developing over many years and is less buggy than the native Blender simulator.
If you do a lot of Fluid simulations then this may be a worthwhile addon. It has very good support ready to help.
It also does not have smoke or fire options because the developers are focusing on just the fluid system so that they can perfect it.
FLIP Fluids is for anyone who:
- Does lots of fluid simulations
- Is having problems or finding bugs in MantaFlow that aren’t getting fixed.
The free alternative to FLIP Fluids is the built in system; MantaFlow which is very similar, but has less support, so it may not be great for a big project with a deadline.
MESHMachine
$40+
MESHMachine takes a different approach to modeling in Blender, making it not necessary to use subdivision, which will save you a lot of memory as well as time.
It is pretty much an upgrade to a lot of Blenders modeling features, as well as some additional features not currently in Blender.
It has loads of documentation and plenty of tutorials making it beginner friendly.
MESHMachine is for anyone who:
- Does lots lots of hard surface modeling
- Does lots of modeling in general
- Works on intricate models where subdivision surface will mass everything up
- Wants a faster way to make scifi corridors
The free alternative is to use the default blender modeling tools which are sometimes less intuitive and fast, but still very usable.
Fluent: Power Trip
$29
Fluent: Power trip, like the Box Cutter addon, is a cutter tool which is used for making boolean cuts in a more efficient and much faster way, by adding shortcuts as well as presets.
It also has some really cool features, like the ability to instantly add pipes, grills or wires to your models.
Fluent: Power Trip is for anyone who:
- Does hard surface modeling
- Makes a lot of concept art
The free alternative to Fluent: Power Trip is to use the native modeling system and to setup your booleans manually.
Realtime Materials for Blender
$35+
Here is another texture pack, but these ones are all PROCEDURAL! made by the motion graphics tutorial maker Ducky 3D it includes 200 realtime materials which all have inputs for roughness, scale and color.
Since they are node based, they can be completely customized in the shader editor. This is an awesome pack and once you know how to bake textures, then you can export it into Unity, Unreal Engine or anywhere else.
Like other paid blender addons it includes a menu for importing textures for maximum ease of use.
Realtime Materials for Blender is for anyone who:
- Uses Blender for texturing
- Wants lots of customizable texture presets
The free alternative is to make your own procedural tutorials, which Ducky 3D has quite a few of in fact.
How Do You Rate These Paid Blender Addons?
If you found this list of paid blender addons helpful and have not already checked out the free addons list, be sure to.
Edit: I may have added more than ten addons, I couldn’t help myself 🙂