Mindmapping is a great tool for getting your thoughts organized, brainstorming, or for structuring and documenting projects. And why not do it in Blender? SpectralVectors created this add-on to add a new node editor view to Blender for mindmapping. In addition to creating mindmaps, it also lets you add 'notes' to other node diagrams!
Download and documentation
You can find MindMapper on GitHub.
What It Is
This addon gives you an 'Extra' category in the Shader, Geometry and Compositor Node Editors Add Menu, as well as a custom Node Editor.
- Just click Add > Extra > Mindmap or Note to use the nodes in any node tree.
- To create a Mindmapper Node Tree, open the Mindmapper Node Editor, click 'New' to create a new node tree, then, click Add > Mindmap.
- You can change the text and the background color of the node, as well as connect it to one or more other nodes to create a flowchart.
How It Works
- It works by displaying a String Property as multiple Label strings, separated by number of characters.
- The complete text will display on the node, but in order to edit it, you must unhide the panel at the bottom of the node, then you can type or paste any text you like.
- The top row holds the node label, and the node color.
- The next row allows you to select the node image.
- The next allows you to select the node image folder.
- The next holds the main node body text as a field you can edit directly.
- The next holds a file selector to let you populate the node body text from the Text Editor workspace.
- And, finally you can dynamically change the number of node inputs and node outputs, however doing so will break the links, so set up your i/o before making connections!
- There is not currently support for renaming sockets, importing/exporting text etc.
- Image support comes through both 3dn-bip's Image Preview Generation, and Blender's auto-generated thumbnail previews.
8 Comments
It's an unexpected turn and, to me, a step in the wrong direction as it has NOTHING to do with art, not to mention 3D. Let's leave this to specialized PDA apps and devices
It's not 'a step in the wrong direction' - apparently it was useful to SpectralVectors, and it might be to others too. Just don't install it if you don't like it.
I wrote 'TO ME' and it's just MY opinion and nothing ex cathedra. And you really shouldn't react like that only because you don't like the wording. That's IMMATURE. And again, TO ME it's wrong as it means bloating Blender. And yes, I'm not gonna use it.
Hi Lukas. It is best to keep comments and criticism on public forums like this constructive, especially when someone is announcing a free product. This addon was interesting to me, and I will be checking it out. As it is a separate download from Blender, it does not add to Blender "bloating".
It's very useful to brainstorm on your projects and kind of impressive for clients when they see it in the same piece of software you use for 3D.
You say constructive? OK. This add-on is too limited for this kind of software. It is way more like a demo than real value. And not everything that uses the concept of nodes must be made a part of Blender, right? And I reckon you are just as constructive with viruses as they are, for the larger part, free.
it is also the digital "post-it" in node view!
important as annotation.
sometimes, handwriting annotation is hard to read or something
As long as the maps cannot be shared, ported and the add-on has no TEAM WORK option it's not quite useful. Mind maps are, in the first place, made to coordinate team work. Still, if someone likes toys and needs a proof that "this is also possible with Blender"...