QoL Blender

Problem

Production work is full of small, repeated friction: cleaning up scenes, wrangling modifiers, setting up asset libraries, rebuilding the same render presets. Each task takes minutes; together they take days. The question is which of these deserve to become tools.

Approach

Build a growing toolkit of small, focused utilities — each one solving one repetitive problem completely rather than half-solving many.

Architecture

• Lumi Tools — scene cleanup, modifier management, data purging
• Asset workflows — asset-library setup, asset marking, Asset Browser integration
• Visualization — utility materials for inspecting scenes without touching final shaders
• Render presets — quick world/render configuration switching
• Edge-wear generator — procedural edge wear built with Geometry Nodes

Engineering Decisions

• One tool, one job: utilities stay small and composable instead of merging into a monolithic panel.
• Asset Browser as infrastructure: treating Blender’s asset system as a pipeline component, not a convenience.
• Geometry Nodes over scripts where possible: procedural node setups are editable by artists, not just developers.

Result

A practical utility belt used across personal and production work — each tool removing a specific, recurring cost from the daily loop.

What I Learned

• The best tooling targets the boring 80%, not the impressive 20%.
• Small tools ship faster, get adopted faster, and are easier to maintain than platforms.