I was just making research about cool plugins for blender. Especially for hard surface and general usage. Here are the addons i've found useful. I didn't try all of them yet, but you can check them out.
Hardops is best and most useful one for hard surface artists as MmAaXx said.
Speedflow and speedflow companion makes some things faster, i'm not sure how much it will be useful.
DECALMachine lets yous create decals and project them to polygon surfaces. You can render them in cycles, bake them to normal map, or just export them for using in game engine with custom shaders, like star citizen workflow.
YAVNE, yet another vertex normal editor. The name explains enough, i guess.
Pie Menu Editor lets you customize blender toolbars, and create new pie menus, toolbars, modal ui, macros, sticky keys, stack keys, menus.
Re-Last lets you bind keys to different tool properties like bridge tool options.
Capsule lets you batch export your objects to unity or unreal, with automated workflow.
Mira Tools has a lot of new modelling and retopology tools.
Magic UV looks cool for extra uv tools.
Wonder Mesh can create primitives with editable options after creation.
As i say before, i didn't try all of them. Blender users can give more advice, but here was my two cents. I would also like to know if there are some "must have" addons.
It really depends on the kind of workflow you'll be using.
For "creative" workflows (using some original approaches to modeling, with the tools somewhat influencing the designs) then indeed things like Hardops, Decalmachine and the likes are really interesting and useful.
However for "standard" workflows (that is to say, to output the kind of universally editable meshes that one can be expected to do in a big production involving teams of artists, and concepts that you cannot creatively deviate from) then all you need is standard polygon modeling tools, which are all present in Blender by default.
So basically this is a bit of a multifaceted question.
Gotcha yeah - so in this case you can definitely try some "original" workflows, even if they end up influencing/limiting your designs. For instance you could decide to not even do highpoly models at all, and simply use trim sheets of details in order to add interest to otherwise simplistic models.
So in a sense your original question is probably too broad - since it could imply that your goal is similar to this
So , at this time, you should not worry *at all* about any specifics of "hard surface modeling for weapons". All you need to focus on is very lightweight lowpoly modeling, capturing forms without even bothering thinking about subdiv. Because once you know how to do that very well, THEN there are a lot of cool quirky shortcuts you can take to turn a lowpoly base into a decent, semi-hacky yet good looking asset.
Once you know how to do that, then you'll be able to turn basic yet clean models into decent game assets with just a few clicks and a few modifiers. And this doesn't require any plugins - just a good grasp on basic polygon modeling tools.
Replies
Hardops is best and most useful one for hard surface artists as MmAaXx said.
Speedflow and speedflow companion makes some things faster, i'm not sure how much it will be useful.
DECALMachine lets yous create decals and project them to polygon surfaces. You can render them in cycles, bake them to normal map, or just export them for using in game engine with custom shaders, like star citizen workflow.
YAVNE, yet another vertex normal editor. The name explains enough, i guess.
Pie Menu Editor lets you customize blender toolbars, and create new pie menus, toolbars, modal ui, macros, sticky keys, stack keys, menus.
Re-Last lets you bind keys to different tool properties like bridge tool options.
Capsule lets you batch export your objects to unity or unreal, with automated workflow.
Mira Tools has a lot of new modelling and retopology tools.
Magic UV looks cool for extra uv tools.
Wonder Mesh can create primitives with editable options after creation.
As i say before, i didn't try all of them. Blender users can give more advice, but here was my two cents. I would also like to know if there are some "must have" addons.
For "creative" workflows (using some original approaches to modeling, with the tools somewhat influencing the designs) then indeed things like Hardops, Decalmachine and the likes are really interesting and useful.
However for "standard" workflows (that is to say, to output the kind of universally editable meshes that one can be expected to do in a big production involving teams of artists, and concepts that you cannot creatively deviate from) then all you need is standard polygon modeling tools, which are all present in Blender by default.
So basically this is a bit of a multifaceted question.
So in a sense your original question is probably too broad - since it could imply that your goal is similar to this
https://images.contentful.com/rporu91m20dc/PlHlTbmu2IgIMiKw2WyYG/eb65ef02b433dde84d821b7bb9a14419/data.images.event.124.DOOM_Hellshot_Full.jpg
... which definitely doesn't fall into the category of fast workflows or the idea of creating more with less
https://i.stack.imgur.com/Eaxlq.png
Into something slightly better. :P
So , at this time, you should not worry *at all* about any specifics of "hard surface modeling for weapons". All you need to focus on is very lightweight lowpoly modeling, capturing forms without even bothering thinking about subdiv. Because once you know how to do that very well, THEN there are a lot of cool quirky shortcuts you can take to turn a lowpoly base into a decent, semi-hacky yet good looking asset.
In short : forget about plugins and fancy tools for now. Just focus on trying to build something like this
https://cdn.tutsplus.com/cg/uploads/legacy/032_Game_Knife_Series/preview_2.jpg
in, say, under an hour.
Once you know how to do that, then you'll be able to turn basic yet clean models into decent game assets with just a few clicks and a few modifiers. And this doesn't require any plugins - just a good grasp on basic polygon modeling tools.