Top Blender Add-ons to Make Your Project Less Scary

Some of these I have not seen before some I have heard of the "Screen Space Global Illumination for Eevee " looks the most interesting

Cool! Thanks Lobo

Thanks Lobo

Nice selection Lobo. Bookmarked for when I get to playing with 2.8/2.9.

I thought it was a decent list some of them I had never seen myself and the "Screen Space Global Illumination for Eevee " is free and setting up lights is still a subject I have not mastered and if there is something to make it a bit easier so much the better

Great list Lobo!!.

I have been using the SSGI for EEVEE addon for a few weeks now.

It gives EEVEE realtime bounce lighting like that you see in the popular game engines like Unreal 4 or Unity.

SSGI also enables emmisive materials to act as a light sources in EEVEE the same way they do in path tracers(cycles)

This is a tremendous advantage for those of us who use Blender for both our content creation and our final rendering.

Thank you for the information wolf359 I am working on a hopeful project that I want to offer as potential content and the scene has a couple of objects that will be emissive lighting for the scene so that will be very helpful

Thank you much Lobo3433

@Lobo3433 If you're going to use SSGI for a commercial project, be aware that the addon is currently a shader hack, not exactly the same screen space GI you get with some game engines. This means that it does not work properly with HDRI environment lighting (yet). As mentioned on the download page, the specular component between object reflections will give inverted colors when used with HDRI. There are also other limitations, but that's the big one. Do not use it with HDRI environments.

Eventually, true SSGI will be integrated into Eevee as it is in the Unreal Engine and Marmoset Toolbag, but for now, it's the best we have. If you're offering textures with your scene, this plugin will alter the nodes to create the effects. Not a big deal, but should be noted especially for commercial products.

If you're going to use SSGI for a commercial project, be aware that the addon is currently a shader hack, not exactly the same screen space GI you get with some game engines. This means that it does not work properly with HDRI environment lighting (yet). As mentioned on the download page, the specular component between >object reflections will give inverted colors when used with HDRI. There are als other limitations, but that's the big one. Do not use it with HDRI environments.

In general, commercial products should ,of course, only be made for use with the default "vanilla" releases of Blender with NO dependencies on third party add-ons.

"SSGI for EEVEE" mass replaces all princlpled BSFD Shaders with a special "SSGI principled Shader (see pic).

It also has a N panel where you can increase/attenuate or even completely remove the effect as well as bake the SSGI lighting to a cache file.

As already noted, the major problems are with highly relfective surfaces but also any image based textures with with SSS Shader applied while using HDRI.

The good news is that you can resolve the issues and still use HDRI lighting by simply replacing the auto created "SSGI Pricipled" shader with a standard principled BSDF on the problem material types for personal projects and still get the other bounce lighting benefits of the add-on.

or alternatively light your scenes with standard point/area/sunlamps in your EEVEE based workflow.

I plan to discriminately use the SSGI add-on for alot of the interior scenes in my animated web series, as I will have total control over the shaders& lighting being used .

Here is an EEVEE render of my recently completed command deck bridge set environment using the SSGI plugin.

The skin shader on the junior officer was ruined by invoking the SSGI shader but quickly easily restored by replacing it with a standard principled BSDF.

I would add that as much, as I love the EEVEE engine for fast animation rendering, it is a good idea to become knowledgable with as many of Blenders lighting and rendering approaches as possible for versatility.

For example, I have concluded that for volumetric smoke & fire effects, that Cycles (even with low sample rates and aggresive denoising) still gets more acceptble results than in EEVEE on my hardware and I dont mind the longer render times as I have three PC's since getting my new one back in July, thus I can commit to lengthy or overnight renders and still have my older machines available for continuing to work...or play. ?

Thanks LuxXeon and Wolf359 for the additional information I missed the part about it being a shader hack and fully understand the points you both made and really appreciate the additional information

Thanks, Lobo! There's some really good addons in that list. The really great ones are pay, but worth it. I for one can't rig or animate on my own for crap, which is why I started using Daz Studio to begin with, but that Autorig addon really seems to be a great way to get my feet wet.