A new release of PyClone is available!

The Download is available here.

This version is built on Blender 2.93 which includes a bunch of improvements to the standard Blender functionality. You can view the Blender release notes here.

Release Notes

The Home Builder Library received the most updates in this release.

Updated UI – The entire UI has been updated to make navigating assets quicker. You now will find library tabs to access assets specific to kitchen, bath, and closet spaces. The Home Builder Sidebar has also been updated to provide you with an easier way to change materials, cabinet fronts, hardware and a new UI to add parts to cabinetry.

Additionally there are also new menus added to the 3D Viewport that displays specific commands for the selected assets.

Closet Designing Features – A new library category has been added to assist with the task of designing closets. Since closets are typically very custom you can add openings to walls then drop components into the openings to create your design. This is the first step towards creating features to design custom cabinetry. These types of features are going to be added to the kitchen library soon to give you the same flexibility when designing kitchens and baths.

Saving custom cabinets to the library – A new category has been added to allow you to save custom cabinets to the library. This is especially helpful to create custom kitchen islands that can be quickly added to your design. This is considered a feature for advanced users so I’ll be creating some tutorials that will teach you how to utilize this feature, and begin creating your own categories of custom cabinetry.

Wall Drawing Improvements – While drawing walls dimensions are now displayed, and you have the option to type in exact values of the wall lengths. This gives you the ability to accurately generate the room layout.

Decorative Objects – A decoration category has been added to each library allowing you to quickly place decorative assets in your scene. The free library comes with a collection of example assets that you can used, but the extended asset library gives you an additional 50 high quality decorative assets from iMeshh. A special thanks to iMeshh, their assets are incredible looking, but if you have your own assets you can easily save them to the library as well. 

Moldings – Moldings can now be automatically applied to your room and cabinetry. You just select the profiles you want to use, assign them to the appropriate pointer, and run the add molding to room command. After the moldings have been added you can use the built in Blender tools to extrude new points and customize your design.

Material Pointer Groups – Material Pointer Groups have been added to create different material setups. This is useful when you have different materials in the same room, so if you want you can for example now assign a different material for the cabinets on the island vs the cabinets on the wall. 

Cabinet Placement Improvements – The placement of cabinets has also been improved. You can now easily place cabinets next to blind corner cabinets. There is also a new interface to position cabinets on a wall. You have options to bump cabinets to the left or right and fill areas with multiple quantities.

New Cabinets – There are a number of new styles of cabinets available including Blind Corner Cabinets, different combinations of Door and Drawer Cabinets, and a Refrigerator Cabinet.

Add Drawer Command – Drawer boxes can now be added to the cabinet interiors. To reduce file size the cabinet interiors are typically empty, but if you want to add drawer boxes you can select the drawer fronts and run the add drawer command.

Auto Add-on Updater – I have implemented the auto updater for Home Builder. I will be pushing releases on a more regular basis. In the library interface you can click the Check for Updates button to see if a new version has been released.

Updated Extended Asset Library – In this new release an updated version of the extended asset library is also available. There are over 150 additional assets in this release and if you have already purchased the extended asset library then you will automatically get access to the update at no additional cost. If you purchased the library from my website the email you used to check out will automatically have access from the blender market.

The Extended Asset Library is being reviewed by the Blender Market and will be available soon.

Overall this was a big step towards creating an open source design platform that provides the same professional features as proprietary software, but using open source software gives you the freedom to tailor the functionality of the software to your specific needs. 

While I’m pleased with the progress in this release I have even bigger plans for the next one that will be released with Blender 3.0.