Is the Blender Hard Ops + Boxcutter Bundle Worth
Buying?
Hard-Surface Modeling Using Hard Ops and
Boxcutter Versus Vanilla Blender
28 July 2024
Hard Ops is one of the most popular Blender add-ons, now sold in a
bundle with the Boxcutter add-on, which has amassed 39900 sales on
Superhive. I’ve been a Blender user for about 6 years, and during most
of that time, I only used the stock add-ons that came with Blender.
Recently, I discovered Hard Ops and Boxcutter, and they changed the
game. I think Hard Ops and Boxcutter are great add-ons, super useful
and time-saving, and are totally worth the price.
This article is not sponsored nor an advertisement for Hard Ops /
Boxcutter.
A comprehensive Hard Ops overview video made by its
developer.
Overview: What does Hard Ops do?
Hard Ops is an add-on developed by
MasterXeon1001 aimed at making
the hard surface modeling workflow in Blender more efficient and
flexible.
Key Features
-
Modeling Tools: Provides advanced tools for
creating and manipulating hard surface models, such as boolean
operations, mesh cleaning, and edge control.
-
Workflow Enhancements: Offers features like quick
mesh creation, beveling, and shading tools, which speed up the
modeling process.
-
Non-Destructive Modeling: Facilitates a
non-destructive workflow with modifiers and boolean operations,
allowing you to make changes without permanently altering the base
mesh.
-
Customizability: Includes a range of custom tools
and settings that can be tailored to fit your specific modeling
needs and preferences.
Overview: What does Boxcutter do?
Boxcutter is another add-on, made by the same developer, designed to
simplify the process of cutting complex shapes and boolean operations
in Blender.
Key Features
-
Cutting Tools: Provides intuitive tools for cutting
and carving shapes directly into your model. It’s especially useful
for creating detailed and intricate cuts.
-
Boolean Operations: Integrates closely with
Blender's boolean operations, allowing for precise and clean cuts
and intersections.
-
User-Friendly Interface: Features an easy-to-use
interface that makes complex cutting operations more accessible,
even for users who might be new to hard surface modeling.
-
Speed and Efficiency: Focuses on speeding up the
process of creating complex shapes and details, enhancing
productivity in your modeling workflow.
The Difference
In a nutshell, Hard Ops does management and provides a varied toolset
for all sorts of modeling operations, whereas Boxcutter specializes in
boolean operations as an advanced tool for performing booleans
efficiently.
How exactly is using Hard Ops and Boxcutter different from using
the boolean and bevel modifiers that Blender has out of the
box?
The main modeling features that Hard Ops and Boxcutter are best known
for build on top of operations and modifiers that Blender already has.
But Hard Ops and Boxcutter make them much faster to do by saving the
user clicks and time. Over time, the add-ons save the artist
significant amounts of time and reduce fatigue from repeated
keystrokes and button-pressing.
Booleans
In stock Blender, to do a boolean—for instance, cutting a circular
inset/depression into 1 face of a cube, you have to create a cylinder,
add a boolean modifier to the cube, set the boolean modifier’s type to
"difference", and assign the boolean modifier’s object to the
cylinder.
In hard-surface modeling workflows, booleans are extremely common.
It’s not uncommon to use 10+ booleans in a hard surface modeling
project. And the time it takes to set up every single boolean modifier
manually adds up.
Contrast that tedious workflow to the far more streamlined Boxcutter
workflow. Boxcutter allows you to draw or "drag out" a shape that you
want to cut into a mesh that you’re editing, and it sets up your
modifiers for you, saving you time.
In Hard Ops, you have an "everscroll" feature that lets you scroll
through the other objects that are booleaning the active object, and
you can apply any boolean by pressing the F key. Saves
time.
Boxcutter has boolean types such as slice and
inset that Blender doesn’t. The inset boolean type is
like Blender’s face inset operation but as a boolean. Super useful.
Edge Data
Blender has different types of edge data: sharp normals, edge creases,
UV seams, and bevel weights. In stock Blender, they need to be set
seperately.
In Hard Ops, multiple or all of these edge data types can be set to be
edited simultaneously. Very useful.
Modifer Management
In stock Blender, modifiers are ordered manually. Hard surface
modeling workflows often use lots and lots of modifiers, and manually
ordering long stacks of them can get tedious.
Hard Ops lets you specify a sort order for your modifiers. For
example, boolean then bevel then subdivision. Super useful. In a
boolean workflow, you don’t need to sift through long stacks of
modifiers and re-order the modifiers each time you add new ones.
Hard Ops has lots and lots of handy quality-of-life time-saving
functions that add up. Hard Ops lets you apply all modifiers of
specific types, e.g. all of an object’s boolean modifiers. This
feature saves time when you have lots of boolean modifiers and you
want to keep a bevel modifier and a weighted normals modifer at the
end of the stack.
If you do hard-surface modeling in Blender, you probably use
metallic materials
and
surface imperfections or grunge textures
on the models you create. Consider trying out CG Meerkat’s shader pack
of 15 physically based metal materials (created based
on
scientific measurements of
physical metals) that has
rust/corrosion/tarnish built in and comes with 5
surface imperfection/grunge textures that add touches of realism to
hard-surface materials like
metal, plastic, and
glass.
