by Nikita Akimov·Workflow
Images © Nikita Akimov. Used for product review; image policy.
M-Cleaner earns its place for handling one specific chore — the duplicate materials that stack up after importing assets — with a single button and a couple of straightforward options.
Adding objects from previously saved blend-files, external libraries, and asset or kitbash sets tends to fill a scene with large numbers of identical materials, often dozens of them in complex projects. M-Cleaner finds the equal materials in the scene and removes the duplicates, reassigning a single unique material to the objects that referenced them.
Running it takes one press of the Clear materials button. A Remove unused checkbox controls what happens to the duplicates: with it on, they are removed from the scene immediately; with it off, they stay in the scene with zero users and are deleted by Blender's regular tools when the scene is saved. A separate Merge by name option cleans materials only by their names, clearing ones with .001, .002 and similar suffixes — the developer flags this mode as destructive.
The add-on lives in the 3D Viewport's N-panel under the M-Cleaner tab and supports Blender versions from 2.90 through 4.1. A demo video is available.
M-Cleaner is best for clearing out the duplicate materials that accumulate when importing objects from saved blend-files, external libraries, and asset or kitbash sets.
M-Cleaner is completely free to download and use.
M-Cleaner lists support for Blender versions 2.90, 2.91, 2.92, 2.93, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0 and 4.1, covering a wide span of releases from the 2.9 series up to 4.1. If you are running a version within that range, the add-on is intended to work. For anything newer than 4.1, check the developer's page for the latest compatibility details before installing.
M-Cleaner is located in the 3D Viewport window, inside the N-panel, under a tab labelled M-Cleaner. If the side panel is hidden, press N in the viewport to open it, then switch to the M-Cleaner tab. From there you run the cleanup by pressing the Clear materials button, and you can set the Remove unused and Merge by name options before running it.
M-Cleaner's Remove unused checkbox controls what happens to duplicate materials after they are detected. With the checkbox on, the duplicates are removed from the scene immediately. With it off, the duplicates remain in the scene with zero users and are then deleted by Blender's regular tools during scene saving. Either way the objects are reassigned to a single unique material; the checkbox only affects whether the leftover copies are purged right away or left for Blender to clean up on save.
M-Cleaner's Merge by name option cleans materials based only on their names, targeting those with numbered suffixes such as .001, .002 and so on. The developer flags this mode as destructive, since it removes materials by name rather than checking whether they are genuinely identical. It differs from the standard pass, which finds equal materials in the scene. Use Merge by name when you specifically want to collapse the numbered name variants.
M-Cleaner is listed as free in this catalog, and the add-on is distributed under the GPL license. Licensing and current terms can change over time, so check the developer's page for the most up-to-date details before downloading. If you have questions about usage terms, permitted uses, or the latest available version, the developer's page is the best place to confirm what applies before you rely on the add-on in a project.
Also in Workflow for Blender.
by Zakmen150
DriverHelper is a Blender add-on by Zakmen150 that generates normalized driver expressions for Shape Keys and other float properties. It creates driver formulas for Location, Rotation, or Scale directly from the Shape Keys panel.
by Ignacio Matey
3D Scan Cleaner is a Blender add-on by Ignacio Matey for optimizing 3D scans. It decimates geometry, removes floors and mesh islands, fixes stretched textures, and instances scans, cutting memory use by more than 80% in some cases.
by pullup
Grease Pencil Draw Transform is a Blender add-on that provides a set of shortcuts to transform a grease pencil stroke without leaving draw mode. Grab, rotate, scale, pinch, slide, smooth and more trigger from letter keys.
by Alt Tab
Alt Tab Colorful is a Blender add-on for saving and using your commonly used colors and color palettes directly inside Blender. It's released under the GPL license and supports Blender 4.0 through 5.0.
by dartmeadow
Arc Edge is a Blender add-on from dartmeadow for creating and measuring finite arcs, aiding scientific analysis. It also measures Blender's default geometry objects when selected, outputting data you can feed into other setups.
by Salt Media
BlenderAe2 by Salt Media transfers 3D data and objects between Blender and After Effects in both directions, covering vertices, 3D layer transforms, camera data and layer synchronization.
by MACHIN3
Machin3Tools is a continuously evolving collection of tools and pie menus for Blender, gathered in a single customizable package. It ships in two base variants, Prime and DeusEx, with the DeusEx variant adding more advanced tools.
by MikhailRachinskiy
3D Print Toolbox is a Blender add-on with utilities for 3D printing. It analyzes mesh volume and surface area, checks and fixes geometry, hollows shapes, aligns models to the print bed, and exports to STL, PLY, and OBJ.
by glukoz
UVPackmaster 4 is a UV packing engine for Blender that packs UV maps on the CPU and GPU, using the Cuda and Vulkan APIs, and can run on the CPU and all system GPUs at once.
by MMD
MMD Tools is a Blender add-on for editing MikuMikuDance (MMD) models. It handles importing and exporting model, motion and pose data, along with chopping and joining parts, plus rigid body, material and motion editing.
by HaughtyGrayAlien
SimpleBake brings PBR and traditional texture baking to Blender from a single panel. Select objects, choose maps, and bake — no special node groups or new workflow, working with whatever materials you've already built.
