Setup

Playable Workshop Tools for Blender is a comprehensive add-on that modernizes Blender for game development workflows. It provides a layer-based animation system, streamlined export operators for both 3D and 2D formats, and a collection of quality of life improvements for creating game-ready assets. The add-on requires Blender 4.5.0 or later (support for Blender 5+ is experimental).

Features at a glance

  • Animation system — A layer-based animation system built for game development. Manage multiple animations per armature, use shared base poses, and layer different movements on top of each other with blend modes and influence controls.
  • Exporting — Per-object quick export with support for glTF, Unreal FBX, Unity FBX, 2D skeletal (Pachario), and sprite sheet formats. The add-on handles animation baking and NLA setup automatically.
  • 2D skeleton & sprite sheets — Export your armatures as 2D skeletal animations with atlas support, or render your animations into sprite sheets with Aseprite-compatible metadata.
  • Modeling tools — Quality of life improvements like a pie menu for vertex merging and a quick symmetrize operator.

Installation

You can find the latest version of the add-on pinned in the #blender-addon channel on our Discord server. We appreciate your feedback and support as we continue to develop and improve the add-on!

The add-on is distributed as a .zip file. To install it, follow these steps:

  1. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences.
  2. In the Preferences window, select the Add-ons tab on the left sidebar.
  3. Click on the Install... button at the top of the window.
  4. Navigate to the location where you downloaded the .zip file and select it.
  5. After the installation, you should see the add-on listed in the Add-ons tab.
  6. You may need to enable the add-on by checking the box next to its name.
Planned: Extension Support

We plan to offer the add-on through Blender’s Extensions marketplace after this early access phase. This will allow for easier installation and updates directly from within Blender.

Preferences

The add-on has a number of features that span a variety of areas when it comes to game asset creation. Some people may not want to use all of these features, primarily ones that alter Blender’s default behavior or keymaps. To accommodate this, the add-on keeps its feature set highly configurable through its add-on preferences.

Add-on Preferences

You’ll notice that the add-on preferences are divided into sections, each corresponding to a specific feature or area of functionality. More sections will be added as we continue to develop the add-on and add new configurable features.