Catalog

Blender add-ons for Cultural Heritage.

A curated catalog of third-party Blender add-ons (and a few standalone companions) useful across the Cultural Heritage 3D pipeline — photogrammetry, point clouds, 3D Gaussian Splatting, HBIM and more. Distinct from the EM Framework tools: these are tools you combine with EM, not part of it.

92 tools · 4 recommended · 8 tagged EM pipeline · links verified 2026-06-09 · source: BlenderAddons4CH

Where to find add-ons 3

  • Blender Extensions Platform

    maintained web

    The official, current source for Blender add-ons (replaces the offline wiki.blender.org/Extensions:2.6).

  • Blender Add-on List

    legacy web

    Collection with animated-GIF descriptions and download links (now largely outdated).

Texture painting 4

  • Brush library manager

    legacy

    Manager script for a brush library.

  • Brushes (xrg81)

    legacy

    Brushes to append from a blend file.

  • Texture Paint Plus

    legacy

    Texture-paint helpers by Bart Crouch et al.

  • Zero Brush

    legacy

    Old free version of Zero Brush (now part of the invasive Sensei-free pack).

Vertex painting 1

  • Slope

    legacy

    Write face-slope values to a vertex group / color layer (also in BlenderGIS).

Sculpting 1

  • Space View Brush

    legacy

    Alt+V exposes all sculpting commands at hand.

Materials 1

  • Matalogue

    legacy

    Quickly jump between materials/node trees and scenes.

PBR materials & FOSS ecosystem 6

  • AwesomeBump

    maintained standalone

    Open-source generator of metallic/roughness PBR maps.

  • Luminance HDR

    maintained standalone

    Open-source HDR creation from bracketed exposures/panoramas (ex-qtpfsgui).

  • Real-time PBR (Clément Foucault branch)

    maintained

    The PBR branch by C. Foucault — long since merged into Blender as EEVEE.

  • Blender Brit (PBR node pack)

    legacy

    Free PBR node pack (after Cynicat & Blender Guru).

  • PBR workflows in Cycles (Sairiala thesis)

    legacy

    Bachelor's thesis on PBR workflows in Cycles (Sairiala, 2015).

  • xNormal

    legacy standalone

    High-to-low-poly map baker for many map types (Windows).

Modelling & procedural 14

  • Mesh Align Plus

    maintained

    Precise alignment by picking geometry features.

  • Modular Tree

    maintained

    Procedural tree generator (v3).

  • Sverchok

    maintained

    Powerful node system for procedural/parametric modelling.

  • Circumferences from three points

    legacy

    Build a circumference from three points.

  • Cutaway material

    legacy

    Cutaway shader for sectioning models.

  • Drop to Ground

    legacy

    Drops selected objects onto the active object.

  • Floorboard generator

    legacy

    Generates floorboards.

  • Geodesic distance between points

    legacy

    Measure distances along geodesic paths on a surface.

  • Intersection

    legacy

    Add the intersection with another mesh to the active object.

  • Laser Slicer 0.7

    legacy

    Make cross-sections and export an SVG for laser cutting.

  • np_station

    legacy

    Precision drawing and placement workflow tools.

  • Object Cross Section

    legacy

    Create cross-sections using the active object as cut plane.

  • Planarizer

    legacy

    Coplanarizes selected faces (median normal); fixes non-planar quads.

  • Selective Unhide

    legacy

    Selectively unhide hidden objects.

Retopology / hard-surface 4

  • Blender Carver

    maintained

    Carving / boolean modelling tools.

  • Bool Tool

    legacy

    Direct booleans as well as via modifier.

  • Booltron

    legacy

    Boolean add-on (union/difference/intersect on groups).

  • Box Cutter

    legacy

    Fast cutting/boolean hard-surface workflow.

UV mapping 5

  • Magic UV

    maintained

    UV editing helpers; includes a bounding box in UV space.

  • Multi-Object UV Editing

    legacy

    Edit UVs across multiple objects.

  • Sure UV

    legacy

    Quick box/cube UV mapping for architecture.

  • TexTools for Blender

    legacy

    UV/texture toolset (baking, layout, checker maps).

  • UV Squares

    legacy

    Reshape UV faces into grids/squares.

3D viewport interface 12

Baking 1

  • Meltdown

    legacy

    Improved baking UI.

Photogrammetry import 3

  • Photogrammetry Importer

    ★ recommended EM pipeline maintained Blender 5.0.2+ MIT

    The reference tool for importing photogrammetric reconstructions (cameras + point clouds) from every major SfM/MVS package.

  • 3D Survey Collection (3DSC)

    EM pipeline maintained

    Survey/georeferencing toolset for Blender, interoperable with EMTools (shift, EPSG).

  • Panorama Tracker

    legacy

    Tool to stabilize 360° videos.

Point-cloud import 2

  • Point Cloud I/O

    ★ recommended EM pipeline maintained

    Imports/exports E57, PLY, LAS/LAZ, PCD, XYZ and PTS into Blender's native PointCloud object.

  • Blender Import Point Cloud Addon

    EM pipeline maintained

    Imports PLY files as point clouds into Blender.

3D Gaussian Splatting 3

  • 3DGS Render by KIRI Engine

    ★ recommended EM pipeline maintained Blender 5.1+ GPL-3.0

    Free, full Gaussian-Splat editing and rendering suite with EEVEE integration.

  • Gauss Cannon

    maintained Blender 4.2+ GPL-3.0

    Automates the capture side of 3DGS: camera paths and ray-traced point clouds for reconstruction.

  • Gaussian Splatting Blender Addon (ReshotAI)

    maintained

    Imports a 3DGS dataset and creates visualizations; handy for cleaning floaters.

Compositor 3

  • Blender Quick Compositor

    legacy

    Rapid compositing presets.

  • Color Ramp Dropper

    legacy

    Sample a set of color-ramp values from an image.

  • EasyFX

    legacy

    Post-process renders quickly via compositor nodes.

Multi-user 1

  • Verse 2

    legacy

    Server + client for collaborative modelling in one 3D space.

Landscape & GIS 5

  • BlenderGIS

    EM pipeline maintained

    Import DEM/shapefiles/basemaps and georeference scenes — relevant to CH georeferencing.

  • Sun Position

    maintained

    Sun/sky positioning by date/time/location — bundled in Blender.

  • LOD generation for terrains

    legacy

    Generate levels of detail for terrains.

  • OSG Export

    legacy

    Export to OpenSceneGraph.

  • Vegetation (grass)

    legacy

    Grass/vegetation setup (companion Google Doc no longer available).

Camera & rendering 4

  • Real Camera

    maintained

    Physically-based camera settings for realistic rendering.

  • Advanced Boomsmash

    legacy

    OpenGL-viewport video capture — original link dead (June 2026).

  • CameraImagePlane

    legacy

    Create a projection plane in the camera.

  • Orbit camera

    legacy

    Create a camera that orbits an object.

Animation 4

  • Blender Power Sequencer

    maintained

    Efficiency tools for the Video Sequence Editor.

  • Animation Nodes

    legacy

    Node-based procedural animation system.

  • Flip Animation

    legacy

    Mirror / flip an animation.

  • Keyframes Quick Tools

    legacy

    Quick keyframe operations.

Coding 1

  • Code Autocomplete

    legacy

    Autocomplete for add-on development in Blender's text editor.

Paid / commercial 8

  • Gaffer

    maintained commercial

    Light management and tuning.

  • RetopoFlow

    maintained commercial

    In-Blender retopology toolkit (with tutorials).

  • Asset Sketcher

    legacy commercial

    Paint assets (e.g. trees) onto other geometry.

  • Baketools

    legacy commercial

    Advanced, fast and precise baking tools.

  • Capsule

    legacy commercial

    Rule-based FBX export of object groups.

  • Color Master

    legacy commercial

    Color correction with a rich thumbnail preview section.

  • Lodscape

    legacy commercial

    Automatic landscape LODs (needs clean topology, e.g. from DEM/Instant Meshes).

  • ProLightSkies

    legacy commercial

    Photorealistic outdoor sky/lighting.

Simulation 2

  • Projectors

    maintained

    Simulate projector light onto surfaces in 3D space.

  • Modeling-Cloth

    legacy

    Model and simulate cloth interactively.

Exporter / Importer 2

  • glTF Blender Exporter

    maintained

    glTF import/export — now built into Blender.

  • FBX Bundle

    legacy

    Batch FBX export — original link offline; moved to Superhive / Blender Market.

2D plans & derived data 1

  • MeasureIt_ARCH

    EM pipeline maintained

    Design documentation & technical drawings; export to images, vector graphics or DXF.

BIM / HBIM 1

  • Bonsai (formerly BlenderBIM)

    ★ recommended EM pipeline maintained GPL-3.0

    Reference FOSS OpenBIM / native-IFC authoring platform — the key tool for HBIM.