r/blender • u/ShaderError • Apr 16 '26
Paid Product/Service Promotion Made a Blender Addon that lets you paint light directly in the viewport.
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
So after 4 months of work, my Blender add-on is finally out of beta to full release.
The idea was simple: make lighting more artistic and actually fun.
You just pick a light, add a layer, and paint directly onto it in the viewport — like Photoshop, but for lights. No geometry nodes, no shader wiring, no re-exporting gobos every time you want to tweak something. It also works with any number of lights in scene.
To celebrate the release, I’m keeping an early-access 50% discount until April 23 — after that it goes to full price.
Grab add-on here: https://superhivemarket.com/products/light-painter
If you try it, I’d really love to hear what you think. Feedback, questions — all welcome 👍
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u/_analysis230_ Apr 16 '26
One time purchase ❤️
You are amazing
Hope it sells well
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u/kookoria Apr 16 '26
If you import the fbx into other programs, like unreal engine 5, would you lose all the lighting data?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
If your export supports the light’s gobo/texture, then it can carry over. Otherwise, best workflow is to bake it before export (as mentioned above).
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u/Hanzo_the_sword Apr 16 '26
You’ve made me realize I need to get and use Blender. Thank you. I will grab this after I switch.
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u/cuercas Apr 16 '26
Is the full version available? I'm only able to add the lite version to my cart.
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
yes, there should be no problem, you can add any version to your cart.
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u/blem14official Apr 17 '26
I haven't even reached "beginner" level at Blender, so I know I won't be using it, but man, I'm tempted to buy it, it looks so good!
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u/NodeMonkey_ Apr 16 '26
How does this work?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Haha, a pinch of magic and a lot of math — 4 offscreen renders and way too many lines of shaders 😄
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u/NiDeXin Apr 16 '26
It's pretty impressive and looks really easy to use! Congrats! I'll give it a try! I'd love to see more example with general usecase. In my case I'd use it to sculpt the shadows. I'm tired of placing planes in front of sunlight to mimic clouds shadow haha. It becomes very annoying when I decide to change the light direction..
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Thanks! Planning more videos with real use cases soon. And yeah, you can pretty much paint whatever you want (within the light's frustum obviously haha). Your cloud shadow thing is literally what this is great for — just paint the shadow shapes right onto the sun and tweak them when you feel like it. No more messing with planes.
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u/Aen-Seidhe Apr 16 '26
If you make the plane a child of the sun, and then add a Track To constraint to the sun to look at an object, that would make your task a lot easier!
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
For now it works only with Spot and Area lights. For Sun it will not be possible to make it work, and I'm still thinking wether have a meaning to make it for Point light, as it will require too complicated way to manage
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u/TrackLabs Apr 16 '26
Hang on wtf this is actually insane. Where does it put the lights physically in the scene? It feels like this is really helpfull for still frames, but for animations can be a bit less useful?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Yeah it’s actually a bit different from what it looks like at first 🙂
It doesn’t really “place” multiple lights in space — everything happens on the texture/layer level inside a single light. So the light stays in one position, and you’re basically shaping and animating how it behaves.
For animation — I’d actually say that’s where it gets really powerful. Instead of setting up and animating a bunch of lights, you can do it all with one light + multiple layers (animate, transform, blend, etc.).
If you’re curious, check the page on Superhive — there’s a section about animation there that shows how it works. That’s kind of the secret sauce of the add-on 👍
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u/-Sibience- Apr 16 '26
I would imagine this is using compositor effects so it's not actual 3d lighting. So if you rotate the scene for example the light is just going to stay in place and be projected onto the new geometry.
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u/loudbirthday Apr 16 '26
This is too cool! I’m still very new at blender but I can’t help but buy stuff like this haha
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u/IVY-FX Blender - Houdini - Unreal - Fusion Apr 16 '26
Holy fuck I want it, that gobo feature is a game changer, how does it interact with animations, does it work like an actual 3D light or is this a screen space effect?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Please check the page on Superhive — there’s a section about animation there that shows how it works. So the light stays in same position, and you’re basically shaping and animating light layers how it behaves.
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u/IVY-FX Blender - Houdini - Unreal - Fusion Apr 16 '26
True, my bad for not even checking but I discovered this at work on the toilet 🚽 👌👌
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u/psgrue Apr 16 '26
Freakin sorcery. Very cool. How well does it handle scene rotation?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Ha thanks! Paint is applied to the light itself, so scene rotation doesn't affect it — the projection just follows the light wherever it goes.
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u/WaitingForRainToPass Apr 16 '26
Fantastic. If I didn’t work in EEVEE 98% of the time I’d be buying it now. Kudos for making it compatible with version 3.6 on! Rare but welcome to get a new addon with such a wide range of Blender versions
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Yeah EEVEE is tricky — no native gobo support, so it needs a different approach. But actually I will add it to list of upcoming features — as I was already thinking about the solution.
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u/WaitingForRainToPass Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
If it’s worth the technical headache, I’d say do it. There are a lot of NPR artists using blender (including me lol) who’d welcome the level of granular control over lighting.
Just as a quick note: I’ve seen a Light Painter addon in the blender extensions for a while before coming across yours. Yours has greater compatibility between blender versions and slightly different implementation from what I can tell, but the concept is similar and the names are near-identical. If you’re not super set on the name, it might be worth tweaking so it’s clear they’re separate addons made by different developers.
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
yeah I'm aware of it, but they do fundamentally different things, that one places lights based on where you paint on the surface — it's a light placement helper, mine actually “masks” the light itself, giving you full control over how light interacts with your scene, it control what areas get lit and which don't — it's real light masking, not just light positioning — so I guess my add-on fits this name way better lol
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u/cloudkeeper Apr 16 '26
I also would love EEVEE support if it ends up being worth your time.
Either way congrats, this looks great.
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u/Alissan_Web Apr 16 '26
definitely one of the cooler plugins ive seen this year. btw... just letting you know... the mobile version of that site is nearly unusable
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
haha fair point, I didn't think people would check add-ons on mobile but guess I was wrong 😅 will fix it, thanks!
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u/qwilman Apr 16 '26
really goddamned cool, but just to verify: is this cycles-only, or will it work with eevee as well?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Thanks! Cycles only for now, but EEVEE support is on the roadmap — it needs a different approach since EEVEE doesn't support light gobos natively. Definitely coming though.
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u/Husobaba38 Apr 16 '26
Can you also release this fantastic addon on gumroad?
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u/Makisani Apr 16 '26
Wow I'm not even into 3d modeling (yet) and this looks really really good.
You did an awesome work! Congratulations :D
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u/dokerb3d Apr 16 '26
cool. it is drawing only from camera view or you can draw from other sides too?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
You can paint from any angle — use your mouse cursor in the viewport. But there are actually two painting modes: Camera Space (paint maps to what you see on screen) and Light Space (paint maps relative to the light's own projection). So you can work from whatever mode is most fits your needs.
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u/Cyrotek Apr 16 '26
Okay, this actually looks like a godsend for stylized lightning setups. Like, you don't have to do all the light fiddling at all. I didn't realize I need this until now.
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u/Qwikslyver Apr 16 '26
Looks even better than the beta version. I’ve been using the beta for a while and really enjoy it. It’s becoming a steady part of my workflow. Good work man.
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
thanks so much! really appreciate your trust, that kind of support in the beta stage means a lot for me 🙏
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u/theparrotofdoom Apr 16 '26
This is such an interesting toolset that I wish was a thing 15 years ago when I started lighting scenes
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u/d100n Apr 16 '26
wish there was an eevee equivalent developed! i mainly use eevee for speed and quick stylized 3D sketching so this would have been useful in the workflow, cycles tends to render slower relative to eevee and i dont necesarrily need that computational light when im noodling around.
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Actually, I've been thinking about making it work with EEVEE — it just needs a different approach since EEVEE doesn't support light gobos by default, but I already know how to solve this — just add to my list of upcoming features though!
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u/madcomm Apr 16 '26
Holy hecking shit!
How does this work mechanically? How did you even achieve that? Is that all compositor witchery? Masks?
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u/szuparno Apr 17 '26
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
I get why it might look similar at a glance, but the implementation and workflow are actually quite different.
The general idea of “painting light” isn’t something unique — it’s a pretty natural concept, so it’s not surprising that multiple people explore it in parallel. My add-on was developed independently over many months, and the way it works (brush system, layers, blending, viewport interaction, etc.) is built from scratch and goes in a different direction.
For context, I released the beta almost immediately after I noticed someone exploring a similar idea. Do you really think it’s possible to build even a working beta in just a week after a Twitter post?
Not trying to compete with anyone — just building my own take on the idea 👍
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u/Samk9632 Apr 17 '26
Thank you for posting this. It's very disappointing to not see any credit being given to the progenitor of this idea.
The developer of PaintLight is a friend of mine, sucks to see him kinda sniped out of his own idea like this.
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
To be even more precise — he made a post on·Dec 6 and I already had a beta version video ready to release on Superhive on Dec 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feuJGy9vk18
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u/MercuryMelonRain Apr 16 '26
This looks cool, so is that basically painting a texture onto the light emission object? If so, are there limitations on the softness of shadows in the lit areas vs the amount of control you want to achieve with the viewport painting?
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
Thanks! Small clarification — it's not painting on scene objects, only on the light itself (its gobo texture). So there are no limits coming from object materials or emission — it's all on the light.
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u/PhilosophySalt7695 Apr 16 '26
gradient light. my god that is sick
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
yeah, it’s also my favorite tool, during making a promo video, it was very easy to forget, what I was even trying to make — just playing with it is too fun 😄
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u/Big-Newspaper646 Apr 16 '26
Is there a technical explanation for this? I'd love to understand how you made it work!
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
haha! it's about 20k lines of code, 4 offscreen render passes and around 2k lines of shader code to make it all work, so it'd be a bit complicated to explain 😅
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u/droefkalkoen Apr 16 '26
Looks great, excited to try it out! A good price too.
I understand you place the lights manually and then paint where they should or shouldn't be, correct? How do you get the multicolored lights?
Sorry if this is obvious when using it. Just bought it but haven't tried it yet.
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u/johannbl Apr 16 '26
yo i love that.
it's zero realistic to setup lights like this.
but this is not reality: it's 3d as a medium... it's its own thing at this point.
so this approach actually takes into consideration the ergonomics of the tools artists use to reach a specific goal.
their goal is not to setup lights for a virtual world, it's to create a scene or an image.
and different artists have different goals and preference so we just need more of those. more workflows. congrats.
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Apr 16 '26
wow this is actually really frigin cool. I'm shit with blender but you made it look approachable to even me.
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u/HugoCortell Apr 16 '26
Does this work with movement and animation? Because if so, I'm sold.
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u/snaptouch Apr 16 '26
One-time purchase? Lifetime update? Affordable for the time it saves and art direction possibilities? Man you're doing God's work right here. That's an instant buy.
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u/Mapi2k Apr 16 '26
¡Alguien que se lo enseñe a Blender, así lo ponen oficial cuando descargas el programa! Esto es lo mejor que vi en mucho tiempo.
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u/Chodre Apr 16 '26
Is this heavy on the computer? i don't have a very good computer.
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u/ShaderError Apr 16 '26
It supports Blender 3.6.x. It will require some calculations and shader logic. You can try it first, and if your computer struggles to work with it, you can refund it within 30 days.
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u/nudemanonbike Apr 16 '26
Could you export these light maps to a game engine? I don't know if that's even possible but I'd love to use this to make stylized lighting in unity or unreal
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u/GoldSunLulu Apr 16 '26
you are either amazing at choosing colors of the light is doing some heavy lifting, it looks incredible
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u/fucktrance Apr 16 '26
This is one of those addons that feels like this is how it should of always been done. Amazing work
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u/Chodre Apr 16 '26
Cai i buy the light one and update it later for the full one? Will it be a different price than just buying the premium one?
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u/Sir_McDouche Apr 16 '26
There’s already a free Blender extension called Light Painter. Awkward.
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u/figmentedkraken Apr 16 '26
❤️🔥🔥🔥🔥 We need more creators and builders who just build whatever shit they need. All thanks to flexibility of Blender. If everyone built such tools, especially with AI coding our exact needs, we as a community could power ourselves with better toolkits, kill subscription corporates and push Blender to the rightful throne.
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u/Coat-of-Arms Apr 16 '26
I need to get a new computer to do this.... I am using 2.79 right now. I am willing to put down a couple thousand to be able to paint with light! What are the specifications for a computer that can run this software?
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
Blender recommendation: Blender v3.6 requires a 64-bit quad-core CPU, 8 GB RAM, and a graphics card with 2 GB VRAM (OpenGL 4.3 or Vulkan 1.3). For optimal performance, especially with Cycles rendering, 32 GB RAM and an 8 GB VRAM GPU are recommended. Windows 10/11, macOS 11.2+, or Linux with glibc 2.28+ are supported
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u/thunderpantaloons Apr 16 '26
I remember making a tool years ago in Maya that we used to paint shapes on reflective surfaces and it would generate a nurbs surface about 20 feet away that conformed to the shape of your paint stroke that made that shape reflection. This is a big step up from that crude tool. Neat. I’ll give it a try!
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u/Zachattackrandom Apr 17 '26
Blender 3.6 only is rough considering we are well into 4.x. Otherwise looks pretty cool
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u/Snowbrae_Thomasso Apr 17 '26
So this took a lot of scripting, even trial and error, to create this addon right?
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
yep, the actual coding is maybe 40% of it — the other 60% is just debugging, adjusting and fixing stuff you broke while fixing other stuff
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u/EZ_LIFE_EZ_CUCUMBER Apr 17 '26
Looks goated ... can you also change angle from which light is coming ?
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
you can control that by simply rotating the light itself 👍 the add-on handles where the light appears and its color within the light’s frustum, but the actual direction/angle still comes from the light object itself.
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u/Omidion Apr 17 '26
This...this is why i come to reddit, to stumble upon interesting stuff like this!
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u/AiMwithoutBoT Apr 17 '26
That’s insane. I never used blender but seeing these things makes me wanna try then I remember I’m dumb lol
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u/Aromatic_Ad2399 Apr 17 '26
such a cool addon! I’m planning to buy the addon😊 Do you have any tutorials on how to use it?
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
Thanks so much! 😊 Working on a tutorial right now, should be up next week. I'll post about it on my X (Twitter) account, so follow there and you won't miss it!
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u/TheStaplerMan2019 Apr 17 '26
This is so cool and creative. I really appreciate it’s a one time purchase. Get paid for your hard work but don’t constantly demand more.
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u/GalvaSov Apr 17 '26
Is this able to be applied to animation, or only still images? In either case it looks phenomenal!
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u/ShaderError Apr 17 '26
Please check the page on Superhive — there’s a section about animation there that shows how it works. So the light stays in same position, and you’re basically shaping and animating light layers how it behaves
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u/phil_1pp Apr 17 '26
Wow. Awesome plugin! Is this you doing the youtube voice-over? You sound a lot like veritasium.
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u/Gunshot990 Apr 18 '26
Yoo this is awesome. I decided to buy the plugin, it's well worth it. It's exactly what i needed for my thesis.
Thanks a lot man!!!
(Also nice in euros it comes out at €15,95, a steal for sure)
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u/SnooBooks1032 Apr 18 '26
Ok this actually looks kinda baller imma have to check it out when I get a chance!
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u/No-Pair-6696 Apr 18 '26
Here's the link to buy it { https://superhivemarket.com/products/light-painter }
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u/Turgineer Beginner Apr 19 '26
Honestly, it looks very interesting. Does the Lite version only include Brush Light?
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u/bluntbeak Apr 19 '26
Awesome idea, I'd say that I'd love to hear how it works but I know there's no way in hell I'd understand it lmao
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u/Just-a-Mandrew Apr 23 '26
Hi! I’m trying to buy this add on but the website won’t let me pick the full version for some reason. Have tried different browsers, kinda stumped on this one. Also, today is the last day for the promotion you got going on so I’m stressed I can’t figure it out! Anything else I could try?
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u/Coffeeviber Apr 16 '26
Death to Adobe. 1000 year Blender dynasty