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Updates from June 2025

Note: Freebird is free for students! If you're a student at a school or college, please feel free to email or message me for a free copy!

June 2025 marked a restart of the Freebird project, after a few months of maintenance-only fixes.

Reliability

My focus in June was on improving Freebird's reliability. A number of long-standing critical bugs have been fixed, broken features have been repaired, and missing documentation has been updated. Basically, anything that crashed Freebird (or was urgently broken) was considered as an immediate priority.

I'm still investigating a Blender crash (that happens occasionally). So please save your work frequently.

I'm sure Freebird still has undetected bugs, so please let me know on #support if Freebird crashes for you. But a number of those crashes were fixed in June, and a focused effort has been made to improve the reliability.

Features

In terms of features, Free Extrude is back, and the transform gizmos now support moving/rotating/resize along specific planes. The transform gizmos now also support mode-specific transforms, i.e. the ability to move without rotating/resizing, rotate without moving/resizing, or resize without moving/rotating.

Tools to help improve reliability

To help investigate difficult-to-recreate bugs, I added an event record/replay developer tool in Freebird. If Freebird crashes at any point while running (on my PC), I can replay those exact button presses and movements any number of times, and check Freebird's code while running it. I've fixed a few difficult-to-recreate bugs using this tool. Note: This tool is disabled by default for users, so Freebird isn't recording your actions.

Another improvement was to run Freebird's automated tests in a random order, using pytest-random-order. Freebird already runs over 600 automated tests (which check various aspects of Freebird before a new version is released). But those tests used to run in a fixed order previously. Since I can't predict the order in which a user will use Freebird's tools, I'm now running the tests in a random order. This helps ensure that Freebird is reliable regardless of the order in which you use the various tools. This change has already revealed a couple of hidden bugs (that have been fixed).

Community

The Discord community has grown to nearly 1200 members, and it is active at trying out new Early-Access features and providing valuable feedback!

Some user experiments using Freebird:

Did I miss any? Please send me your cool "made with Freebird" videos!

Next

Lots more to come. The focus, as always, remains on making VR a part of your daily design workflow.

Thanks!

Get started with Freebird!

One month since v2 was launched: what is new and what's next?

It's been slightly over a month since Freebird's v2 was launched, so let's recap what's happened since then, and look at what's coming up next!

Community

Our Discord community has grown to over 600 members, and it is very active at trying out new Early-Access features and providing very valuable feedback! This is crucial to Freebird's ability to build what really matters to users.

There's also been more buzz about Freebird on social media, resulting in some cool experimentation by users!

Some user experiments using Freebird:

Did I miss any? Please send me your cool "made with Freebird" videos!

New features

Here are some of the new features built after v2's launch:

A more detailed list of changes can be found in the changelog.

While some of these features were planned beforehand, most of these were built in response to user feedback. So if you'd really like something built (that helps you today), please let me know!

Upcoming features

While nothing is ever promised (especially since priorities can change based on user feedback), here are some of the important new features coming very soon:

  • Simple animation timeline and controls in VR
  • Transform gizmo, for precise control
  • Knife tool
  • Pick material and color
  • Improved extrude tool
  • Plugin API, to allow users to extend Freebird's VR functionality with custom Python scripts
  • UI for managing annotation layers in VR
  • And lots of UI tweaks and adjustments, including potentially moving the grab functionality to the trigger button (instead of squeeze)

So yeah, lots more to come. The focus, as always, remains on making VR a part of the daily design workflow. So will continue figuring out what's preventing people from using it regularly, and bridging that gap.

Thanks!

Get started with Freebird!

v2 released!

v2 is a fundamental re-write of Freebird's code, to allow new features to be developed much faster (than before). It also adds a few new features like the ability to pose/edit bones of armatures, use your mouse while using VR, and edit mesh elements. The behavior of a few existing features have been changed, in response to user feedback.

Finally, it improves the basic infrastructure to allow faster feedback and improvement: access to crash/app logs, 1-click update button, optional auto-updates, and an Early Access feature for those who like to closely guide the development while taking a bit of risk with stability!

All of these set the foundation for a faster rate of improvement and better responsiveness to user feedback. Thanks for your continued encouragement and patience, I genuinely appreciate it!

Get started with Freebird!

New features

  • Pose Armature Bones - Change the pose of armature bones in POSE mode. Grab the bones using the trigger button on the controller with the Select tool, and drag the bone(s) around to change the pose.
  • Edit Armature Bones - Delete or move armature bones in EDIT mode. Use the Select tool to select and drag bones, or the Erase tool to erase bones.
  • Use the mouse while inside VR - Enable Sync headset with desktop viewport inside the Freebird Settings menu. This will let you use your mouse to select objects while staying inside VR. It will display a laser pointer in VR, indicating where your mouse is pointing at on the desktop screen.
  • Delete elements in EDIT mode - Delete mesh vertices/edges/faces and curve points in EDIT mode.

Better infrastructure

  • Debugging logs - Easy access to crash and application logs, to help report and investigate problems. If you're reporting a problem with Freebird, sharing these logs will help a LOT in identifying the problem. These logs reside only on your PC, they are not transmitted anywhere, and do not contain any personal information. These logs can be accessed from Freebird's preferences panel (inside Edit > Preferences > Addons > Freebird), by clicking the Open Crash Log or Open Current App Log buttons.
  • 1-click update - 1-click button to update Freebird to the latest version. You no longer need to manually download the new zip file and install - it will be done for you with one click of the button.
  • Auto update - (optional) Enable Update automatically (in Freebird Settings) to automatically update to the latest version of Freebird when Blender starts. This update will happen in the background, so it won't slow down Blender while starting.
  • Early Access - (optional) Enable Early Access (in Freebird Settings) to get the latest features as soon as they are ready. These features may be less stable, but this will help guide the development very closely, through your testing and feedback. Once the new features have been tested and considered stable for most Early Access users, they will be released to everybody.
  • Lots of automated tests - Over 950 automated tests cover different aspects of Freebird, to improve Freebird's reliability and stability while you're working on your projects.

Changes to existing features

The UI will be changing frequently for a while, since the project is still in early development. I apologize if the changes cause you any inconvenience. If it is really bothering you, please let me know on the #ideas-and-feedback channel on the Discord Server or email me.

  • Undo/redo is now performed by pushing the joystick left/right on the alternate hand.

  • New behavior: 1-click clone by grabbing an object (with the squeeze button), and then pressing the Clone button on the main controller.

    You can press the Clone button multiple times (while grabbing) to create multiple objects while moving the controller (i.e. one object per click). This is useful for quickly creating several copies at different locations.

Freebird v1 released!

Freebird allows you to use a VR headset with Blender, to create and edit content inside regular Blender.

Get started with Freebird!

Major features

  • Start VR button inside Blender - Switch to VR editing (and back) seamlessly using an easy Start VR button inside Blender.
  • Select Tool - Select and move/rotate/scale objects intuitively in 3D using the VR controllers. You can also select and move vertices/edges/faces in EDIT mode. Keep the trigger on the alternate hand pressed to toggle the selection (i.e. unselect existing selections, or add items to existing selections). You can also click outside all the objects and drag through multiple objects to select them.
  • Pen Tool - Draw lines in 3D using the VR controller. This draws NURBS curves, which you can edit. Use Pipe to make fat pipes, and the Straight line option to draw a straight line/pipe.
  • Shape Tool - Draw primitive shapes (cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, torus, monkey) using the VR controller.
  • Hull Tool - Draw volumes quickly using the VR controller. This is very helpful for expressing shape ideas quickly with rough volumes.
  • Erase Tool - Erase objects using the VR controller.
  • Clone Tool - Clone selected objects, and use 1-click clone for quickly creating lots of clones in different locations around the scene.
  • Edit Mode - Move vertices/edges/faces in the EDIT mode.
  • Bevel/Inset/Extrude - Edit mesh vertices/edges/faces by beveling or insetting or extruding them.
  • Quicktools - Press the Quicktools button on your main controller, and move left or right to quickly switch between the Erase and Select tool. This helps you stay in the creative flow, without needing to look at the menu each time.
  • Hand preference - Choose Left-Handed or Right-Handed, and the UI will adjust to suit your hand preference better.
  • Mirror - Display in Blender's desktop view what you're seeing inside VR. This is useful when you're communicating your idea with someone.
  • Sync with viewport - Use the keyboard and mouse to control the VR camera, and vice-versa also use the VR controllers to control the desktop view.