Making objects bend, twist, or stretch in Blender sounds simple, until you try it. What if there was a clearer way to control and animate those deformations?
This free add-on made by ACGGIT improves how you work with the Simple Deform modifier, making it easier to see and control what is happening. Instead of relying on trial and error or memorizing complex steps, you can quickly adjust deformations and even set up transformation animations with just a click.
Originally released in 2022, with version 2 arriving last year, this add-on now supports Blender 4.2 LTS and newer. If you want to explore its usage or documentation, you can find everything on GitHub.
Main Features
- Gizmo Support – Visual controls make it easier to adjust limits, strength, and orientation directly in the viewport.
- Automatic Limit Matching – Upper and lower limits adapt automatically across all deformation modes.
- Bending Orientation Fix – One-click correction for bending direction, avoiding common setup issues.
- Twist in Bend Mode – Adds the ability to apply twisting when using bending deformations.
- Animation Support – Add or remove keyframes to animate deformation strength and limits.
- Quick Gizmo Toggle – Easily show or hide the gizmo controller with a shortcut (Ctrl+`).
- Object Support – Works with mesh, lattice, and curve objects (as of version 0.2.4).
At the moment, the add-on has a few limitations: it does not handle multiple Simple Deform modifiers well, especially if they overlap, and support is currently limited to mesh and lattice objects.
Some Useful Similar Add-ons
- Deform Along Curve – A procedural tool designed to easily deform objects along curves in Blender. Perfect for creating fences, pipes, rollercoasters, railings, or any object that needs to follow a path, it offers features like stretch & fit, axis selection, curve projection onto surfaces, and even collection-based workflows that respect object sizes. Unlike Simple Deform Helper, which focuses on enhancing Blender’s built-in Simple Deform modifier (bend, taper, twist, stretch), Deform Along Curve covers path-based deformations powered by Geometry Nodes.
- Bender – A lightweight add-on for Blender that makes bending geometry more intuitive and flexible. It allows multiple bends on the same mesh, each controlled procedurally with a gizmo and parameters directly in the viewport. While Simple Deform Helper improves a single modifier with better visualization and animation options, Bender specializes in stacking and controlling multiple bends without relying on Blender’s modifier quirks.
✨ You can download Simple Deform Helper on Blender Extensions.
📘 Want to build your own Blender tools? Check out Blender Tool Development Fundamentals, a complete guide to creating custom operators, UI extensions, gizmos, and Qt widgets for advanced add-on development.
📘 Want to build your own Blender tools? Check out Blender Tool Development Fundamentals, a complete guide to creating custom operators, UI extensions, gizmos, and Qt widgets for advanced add-on development.
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