parametric primitive addon recommendation for blender? (plus any other essentials)

poopipe

I'm asking here because the internet is full of blender "experts" and what I actually want is good answers ...

I finally decided it was time to commit to Blender a week or so ago,  As a max fanboy I find it extremely painful and upsetting but it's far less irritating and janky than Maya we're off to a good start. 

My first stumbling block is the lack of (persistently) parametric primitives - google says there's multiple addons available so I'm curious if people have a favourite. 
Also, if there's any other essential addons for someone who's used to having a proper non-destructive toolset (i.e. max)  I'd love to hear about them. 
I dont care about fancy magic tools - I can write those myself - it's the basics that interest me at the moment. 

TIA 

toxicsludge77

Hey poopipe

For parametric primitives, I use WMesh (https://github.com/WiresoulStudio/W_Mesh_28x/releases) - from my research it seems to be the first one Blender users seem to recommend.

As far as essential add-ons, look at Hard Ops/Boxcutter for non-destructive stuff - I don't use these myself but everyone you talk to will recommend them. I actually don't find any third party add-ons 'essential' other than UV Packmaster and maybe UV Squares/Textools, although I'm still trying to get my foot in the door so maybe that will change if I ever do

Hope this helps somewhat!

gnoop

Sverchok  addon    https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok

Kind of a Houdini or Max Creation graph  for Blender.  Have lots of parametric primitives  or ways  to create your own.   A little bit too deep  and low level  but having a few nice features I have no idea how to do  in Houdini or MCG.   Works just fine with  current Blender version. Looks like actively  developing. 

 

Interface  is not especially intuitive  from my kind of artist based perspective with zero coding experience. 

 Many things are  based on so called "lists"   and "matrixes" , orders in how  vertex data is having been wrote down . Maybe something trivial for a programmer but  took me a while  just to comprehend the idea.  Thankfully it  has a special command  ctrl+right click to reveal actual data  traveling  from one node to another  and ctrl+left click  over a selected node to visualize an outcome in viewport.

So far I only used  Sverchok  to model  parametric arrays/structures  of varying instanced  modules/parts.   Not  parametric modelling those parts itself .   Still kind of of struggling  with doing parametric UVing  while having alredy existing UV on instanced  geo is not an issue.

Sorcar addon   https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar

High level.  Simple like 2x2  but  being  basically  only  node  flow recreation of  standard Blender modelling operations  so having same  primitives Blender has staying parametric and  ever editable through  node flow.   Works correctly only up to 2.8 version.    With 2.9 starts to interfere with Blender default modifiers.   Development seems not very active.

People also  use  "animation nodes"  addon together with Sverchok     but I haven't tried it yet . 

https://youtu.be/slQphRSC6W0

Also maybe  this one https://polycount.com/discussion/223270/power-nodes-thread/p1?new=1

But I have not found a time yet to try it

poopipe

Thanks 😊

I grabbed hardops already - it's pretty solid and covers most of the bases I have in my 3dsmax Boolean workflow 

I'll give the node based ones a go for sure gnoop, anything to avoid actually modelling things makes me very happy 😁