# 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

• Game Development
  • Unity
  • Blender
  • General
• Web Development

# 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 Enhancedfree, a much improved console, with compact messaging, readable stacktrace, "jump to definition" and other neat goodies, a must have
• Enhanced Hierarchy, 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, 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
• PolyCountfree, wanted to know what's eating up your poly budget? This one is for you. Saved me countless hours when optimizing for Oculus Quest
• Plasticfree 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, 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
• MicroSplatfree, 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 Searchfree, a unity-provided package that allows you to search pretty much anything via a single search bar. Summoned via ALT+'
• Play Mode Saver, does exactly what it says. Perfect for tinkering in playmode
• Build Report Inspectorfree, 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
• MeshSyncfree, 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 Recorderfree, a unity-provided package that allows you to record multiple things from your editor. Including videos, gifs, audio and even animations
• Smart Hierarchyfree, 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

• Udon Toolkit, a world development toolchain for VRChat and Unity 2018+. Provides a set of pre-made game logic scripts as well as a full custom inspector system controlled via C# attributes
• orels1's Unity Shaders, a collection of my Unity shaders of varying degree of quality and usefullness
• orels1's Unity Scripts, a place for my assorted editor scripts, fairly neglected due to migration to 2019 and better UIs using the UI Toolkit
• orels1's AudioLink Shader, my personal shader that plugs into llealloo's AudioLink system, primarily intended as a reference implementation

# Luxury

• Rider, the one and only C# IDE you should be using with Unity, period
• Amplify Shader Editor, whether you are just learning shaders, or just want to do quick experimentation and code just doesn't cut it for build up visual effects - Amplify is the way to go
• Better Shaders, a cross-pipeline Shader system that solves all the annoying issues of Surface Shaders and works on everything from BIRP to URP and HDRP
• Magic Lightprobes, an automatic lightprobe placer. Has its downsides, but if your scene is even remotely complex - it will help out immensely
• Mesh Combine Studio, developing realistic scenes without MCS is an exercise in frustration. Its really really good, and I can't recommend it enough

# Blender

• Machin3 Toolsfree, workflow supercharger for Blender. More than a dozen of new radial menus that optimise most of the routine actions in blender. Can't recommend it enough and its free!
• UV Squaresfree, makes your UVs square. That's it. Have a weird strip of bent metal or wood? Now you can make the texture perfectly follow its lines with one click
• TexToolsfree, if you are doing any texturing in blender without those, I'm not sure what are you doing. ANything from UV alignment to any kind of baking mode you can think of - TexTools have it
• Collections Managerfree, built-in addon. Just enable it and enjoy your much improved collection control. Bound to M by default
• Bpy Toolsfree, a collection of small addons that help solve mundane tasks with UV unwraps and photogrammetry. I use the Tube UV Unwrap almost every single day
• EdgeFlowfree, fixes uneven topology so you don't have to
• DreamUVfree, a boon for environment artists. Nice viewport UV editing tools + full HotSpotting via a single click and all for free
• Weight Paint Tools, I am not weight painting in Blender without them anymore. Essential
• Copy Attributes Menufree, built-in addon, expands your CTRL+C with an ability to copy a variety of attributes. From position and rotation to modifiers and vertex weights
• Extra Objectsfree, built-in addon, adds a lot of new objects to the Add Mesh menu including things like Rock Generator
• Abnormalfree, one of the few working normal editing addons. Super useful for fixing shadows on anime faces and other normal issues you might have
• UV Packmaster, never have to worry about subomptimal UV packing ever again

# My Tools and Assets

• Batch Smart Unwrap, 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, 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, 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, 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, a solid photoshop-alternative with one time purchase and no Adobe
• Figmafree, a vector UI design tool built for Mobile and Web, but is still great for designing icons and other aspects of in-game UI
• PureReffree, an ultimate and free reference board. Everyone should use this if they aren't already
• Materializefree, 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
• Simplygonfree, 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 Mixerfree, an alternative to Substance Painter. Still leaves a bit to be desired, but is miles ahead of any other solution while staying free
• ESRGANfree, 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

• Substance Designer, the one and only material creation toolset there is. I have yet to find anything that can rival it at any reasonable level
• Topaz AI Gigapixel, a best-in-class upscaler for your textures. Can handle basically anything: from photoscans to stylized drawings

# Web Development

# My Tools and Assets

• Puremock, a zero-dependency mock api server with simple configuration structure
• Statusreport, a github-pages hosted status page for your apis. Uses github issue labels on a special "status" repository to report incidents