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orels1's Tool Selection

🛠 Development tools I made or am actively using 🛠

# What is this?

I like tools. I make them too! People often ask me for a list of tooling I could recommend to speed up their workflow, hence this page now exist. From web development to gamedev, hopefully you can walk away with at least one new workflow improvement!

# Table of contents

# Gamedev

Each category has a "Luxury" section for expensive, but incredible tools. I didn't feel like putting them into the main list, but they are often the best thing u can get.

Tools are listed in no particular order, some are paid but all 99% worth it

# Unity

  • Console Enhanced (opens new window)free, a much improved console, with compact messaging, readable stacktrace, "jump to definition" and other neat goodies, a must have
  • Enhanced Hierarchy (opens new window), even tho Unity 2019+ hierarchy is much better - Enhanced Hierarchy still provides a much better glance at the state of your project. Active toggles, layers and tags, layer-based highlights, improved tree view, etc
  • Rainbow Folders (opens new window), the blessing for visual people, like me. Automatically marks common folders like "Textures" or "Materials" with appropriate icons and allows to customize the look of any fodler or even set up global rules
  • PolyCount (opens new window)free, wanted to know what's eating up your poly budget? This one is for you. Saved me countless hours when optimizing for Oculus Quest
  • Plastic (opens new window)free tier, if you aren't version controlling your projects yet - its time to fix that. 5GB of Plastic is included for free with a Unity account - don't miss it
  • Prefab Painter (opens new window), have a lot of assets and placing things takes too long? This one fixes all of it. Brushes, pin point adjustments, per-asset placing customizations, it has it all. Works best combined with MCS
  • MicroSplat (opens new window)free, if you do any kind of terrain work - you probably need MicroSplat. its free and great out of the box. But you can buy extra packs with more features if you want to expand
  • Quick Search (opens new window)free, a unity-provided package that allows you to search pretty much anything via a single search bar. Summoned via ALT+'
  • Play Mode Saver (opens new window), does exactly what it says. Perfect for tinkering in playmode
  • Build Report Inspector (opens new window)free, a unity-provided package that shows you some info on the last build: size, which assets were included, which files were generated, etc. Helps with debugging build size
  • MeshSync (opens new window)free, a unity-provided package that allows you to connect Blender and Unity together for a synced development workflow. Might feel like a bit of a too integrated flow, but I would encourage everyone to try it out
  • Unity Recorder (opens new window)free, a unity-provided package that allows you to record multiple things from your editor. Including videos, gifs, audio and even animations
  • Smart Hierarchy (opens new window)free, a tool to visualize object types in your hierarchy. Also allows creating "fake" hierarchy folders that do not create actual transform hierarchies thus avoiding runtime costs. Technically no longer developed, but it still works just fine

# My Tools and Assets

# Luxury

# Blender

# My Tools and Assets

  • Batch Smart Unwrap (opens new window), a simple script to Smart UV Project all of the selected objects into their own UV space. Since its not possible in blender out of the box, and it came up often enough to make a tiny addon

# Luxury

  • HardOps/BoxCutter (opens new window), putting them together as they are so interconnected. If you are doing hardsurface with boolean+bevel workflows you already know about these, but I couldn't just skip them anyways
  • MeshMachine (opens new window), when you are done with your booleans - its often time to clean things up. MeshMachine includes the infamous "unfuck" button, and it can't be overstated how useful it is
  • DECALMachine (opens new window), applying decals to your meshes and creating trim sheets: the addon. If you are doing any of that - Decal Machine will feel like absolute magic

# Gamedev General

These are mostly standalone tools that can be used in an aspect of game development

  • Affinity Photo (opens new window), a solid photoshop-alternative with one time purchase and no Adobe
  • Figma (opens new window)free, a vector UI design tool built for Mobile and Web, but is still great for designing icons and other aspects of in-game UI
  • PureRef (opens new window)free, an ultimate and free reference board. Everyone should use this if they aren't already
  • Materialize (opens new window)free, an image to material generator. While the UI leaves a lot to be desired - it can easily rival the paid solutions like Substance B2M in terms of customization and output quality
  • Simplygon (opens new window)free, the industry-standard mesh optimisation toolset. Can be used for free. Includes Blender and Unity 2019.4+ plugins, so there is no reason to not use it
  • Quixel Mixer (opens new window)free, an alternative to Substance Painter. Still leaves a bit to be desired, but is miles ahead of any other solution while staying free
  • ESRGAN (opens new window)free, an open-source image-upscaling toolset. Has all the benefits of being open source (as in - being free), while also inheriting all the pitfalls (like not having any user friendly UI). Still does the job well. If you don't feel like figuring it out - take a look at Gigapixel

# Luxury

# Web Development

# My Tools and Assets