Kaleidoscope Add-on – A small Package of Nodes for Blender
Don’t let the name fool you – Kaleidoscope offers some very nice node setups for color manipulation in your scene.
Akash Hamirwasia writes:
Kaleidoscope add-on adds a small package of Nodes for Blender’s materials. These nodes can help you make your scene more colorful and accurate to the real world.
The Spectrum Node allows you generate infinite color palettes that are aesthetically pleasing in any scene you create. The Colorful Spectrum Engine allows you to generate palettes based on color rules such as Monochromatic, Complementary, etc. The Palette can be modified, applied to a ColorRamp and can be managed in any number of ways.
The Intensity Node provides you with all sorts of pre-defined values nicely categorized so that you can use them in your node setups. You can choose any Glass IOR value or even any Blackbody Temperature Value, to make your lighting colors look correct.
You can save, load and sync all your favorite palettes and values. Both the nodes have support for animation as well. Kaleidoscope add-on is completely free to use, and you can always support me in keeping the add-on updated :)
That is a a pretty fantastic add-on – this should be part of Blender as this provides a much needed color theory tool!!!!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, really means a lot to keep me motivated :)
Great work, You should change the name Kaleidoscope, is misleading and harming your great work.at first I was thinking it was a plug in to make patterns, and I was not interest in check it out.
You are so right MAR10! This add-on is so much more useful than the name implies!
I thought it would be an add-on that would only make kaleidoscope patterns. Now I’m glad I checked it out.
Ah! I think the name is really wrong now! From my point of view, I thought to name it Kaleidoscope because a Kaleidoscope uses Colors in infinite and creative ways (to produce those patterns) :)
The name from your view makes totally sense – the problem however is that with the word most people visually imagine something different ;)
Amicably, I disagree. One look at the image gave me an idea of what the node does. Reading the description did the rest. ;)
It’s hard to come up with a succinct name that both references the nature of the product’s action as well as sounds inviting to use.
I think “Kaleidoscope” works fine. Though, perhaps when using it in a title, just adding the words “Kaleidoscope: The Color Palette Tool” may help.
I agree. It is hard to choose a nice creative name for add-ons like this. Keeping the name “Color Palette Nodes add-on” does not sound that great. Before I had another name, but due to conflicting name with another product in Blender, I had to change it to Kaleidoscope.
Probably, I will keep the full title as it is, because Kaleidoscope not only has colors, even values and maybe, even more stuff in the future ;)
yeah I full agree
This is the kind of addon that I’ll get so used to using, I won’t remember life before it.
Brilliant development and generous share, sir. I’ll be sure to make a donation soon. :)
Glad to know that you are using the add-on :)
Also, thanks for the compliments and would wait for your donation
Wow, that’s extremely helpful and well thought out. Didn’t quite catch how the kaleidoscope node was driving the color ramp node. Was that done through drivers or something?
Glad to know you are finding the add-on useful. It is through the internal code that treats the ColorRamp colors just like the palette colors of the node. Hence, both of them get updated together. No Drivers were used ;)
Awesome functionality and beautifully coded!
Thanks for doing it Akash.
Thanks for those kind words :)
i rellay loved it on 2.7x.. are you going to make it available for 2.8?
Glad to know you liked it. I have been working on the next version of the add-on in my free time which also has a rewrite to improve performance. Would make it compatible with 2.8 :)
cant wait, my friend. this addon is way underrated
2.8 plsssss
when did you think the version for 2.8 is releasing
Any way we can import color palettes from a URL so it is not necessary to input the color hex manually? This ad-don is so damn good btw. Great job!
Also, the color in the viewport sometimes doesn’t update when plugging the node output to the color input of a shader if the palette is generated before connecting the node ;)
No, the only thing closest to getting a palette from URL is using the online palettes. I’ll take a look at the bug you mentioned, and hopefully come up with a fix for it
Okay, thanks a ton!
does this work with the current version of blender? i will gladly purchase if it does
thank you for making this plugin and keeping it available for the current version of blender. i plan on keeping using this plugin for as long as its available and will be donating as soon as im able