So, we are a couple of days into Blender 4.3, and things seem a bit more stable. Yesterday, we finally saw the official release of True Terrain 5. Whoo-hoo! <party blower sound>
True Terrain is one of my favourite Blender add-ons. Unlike Fluent Power Tools, Machin3 Tools, and HardOps, which are fundamental modelling toolsets, or True-Sky and PSA, which are natural lighting solutions, True Terrain is a very specific one-trick pony: it makes landscapes. I'm very drawn to creating big environments, although I need a lot more training to do it properly. I have some bad habits and some unrealistic expectations.
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| First play with True-Terrain 5.00 |
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| World-Creator heightmaps + True-Terrain = Top Terrains |
A small bump in the True-Terrain road
It was clear that TT5's material library was not installed correctly, as some map files were missing. I spent a good hour trying to sort it out before raising the issue through their Discord. Richard and his team found the issue—an edge base between Blender and their packaging system—which was fixed and made available by the end of the day. Sorted! You don't see that level of support very often.
I also found an issue while expanding my asset libraries through True-Assets (also created by the same team). That issue is still being investigated, but I have confidence that they'll have it fixed soon.
Bump! True-Sky
It looks like there's an issue with True-Sky. Also created by the same True-VFX! They make amazing add-ons! Clouds and sky elements are broken, presumably a late change in Blender 4.3's node system. I expect a fix is coming within a day or two. The sun still lights a scene, it just doesn't let you apply haze or fill the sky with amazing clouds.
Blender Shortcut nightmare
There is something that Blender needs to improve. Keyboard shortcuts are the normal method of making things happen in Blender. That's a good thing! However, the system has been expanded and extended in both core functions and within the countless available add-ons to the point where there aren't enough keys on a keyboard to support all the shortcuts. Whenever I install, several add-ons try to use the same bare keys, resulting in conflict. For example, "F" is used by Machin3Tools for Focus, but Fluent Power Tools wants to use it to bring up its menu. What to do!? What a mess!
I have an expensive keyboard with additional Function-style keys along the left side. I've installed software that lets me program these "G" keys for some common Blender tools, which helps to handle the shortcut conflicts. I will leave it to the Blender Foundation to work out how to bring sanity to the hundreds of shortcuts.
The G keys I've set up are as follows:
G1 Creative Flow
G2 Fluent Power Tools
G3 RanTools
G4 Bagapie
G5 MeshMachines
G6 Engon Asset Browser
I stopped using Creative Flow because I couldn't figure out where the menu kept going. Now that it has a dedicated function key, I will learn how to use its super-modelling powers.
RanTools is a massive bag of mucho-excellento tools. Again, I just didn't use it because there is so much there, but much of it is now duplicated in other tools.
It's the same story with Bagapie, which is focused on doing Archvis-style scenes. It provides a quick fix for scattering and organising and includes some nice geo-node-based building assets.
BlenderBase
It's considered good practice to run with a few Blender installations. This means that you can quickly identify where add-on compatibility problems occur. You can run an installation with a subset of your add-ons if you're concerned about interoperability. Blender Launcher stopped being supported, and although it is now back, another Blender utility is available: Blenderbase from the Physical add-ons team. It looks great!
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| Turn add-ons on and off via this panel. Launch different versions of Blender with ease. |
Next
I'm going to take this opportunity to learn and revise some lost workflows and familiarise myself with advanced tools that could have improved my life and made my modelling results more professional.I'll install and play with some of the add-ons I got in a huge Blender Market Best of 2024 bundle , but I never actually got around to installing them. I must remember that these are standalone products that won't get updated for free.
Including:
Shaders Plus v4 - https://blendermarket.com/products/shadersplus
Advanced caustics rendering! I don't need it often, but it is useful to have in your toolbag.
Gobo Plus - https://blendermarket.com/products/gobos-plus---procedural--4k-gobos-for-cycles--eevee
Complex environmental shadows make scenes look more real.
Flip Fluids - https://blendermarket.com/products/flipfluids
Blender's best fluid simulation toolkit. Looks like it might make your computer catch fire.
Procedural Alleys - https://blendermarket.com/products/procedural-alleys
Geo-nodes magic for conjuring urban alleyways
And on and on!!
Too many to list here. Traffiq adds a vehicle library. Looks great!
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