For anyone still nursing the loss of Modo, Yoshiaki Tazaki—a former Foundry software engineer with a decade of hands-on Modo experience—has released YT-Tools, a Blender add-on designed to faithfully re-create much of the modeling workflow that made Modo beloved among artists. It’s a productivity-focused toolkit that transfers muscle memory from Modo into Blender without requiring the user to completely retrain their approach.
The add-on requires Blender 4.0 or later and runs on both Windows and macOS, though Linux users may need to experiment, as the platform hasn’t been officially tested. It’s priced at 20 USD, making it a relatively small investment for artists looking to streamline their modeling work.
What YT-Tools Changes in Blender
Rather than reinvent Blender’s wheel, YT-Tools layers on a series of contextual and Modo-inspired operations. Selection behaviour is overhauled to allow fluid transitions between vertices, edges, and faces, with double-click loops, boundary detection, and a history-aware loop selection system. Selections can be stored and recalled independently of the undo stack, meaning an artist can return to a complex selection at any time without having to retrace their steps.
Slicing tools mirror Modo’s interactivity, enabling loop or polygon cuts with curvature-sensitive control and handle-based visual feedback. Merging can be done with symmetry awareness, and deletions respond intelligently to whether the target is a vertex, edge, or face.
The Return of Falloffs
Transformation is where the Modo DNA is most obvious. Linear and radial falloffs make it possible to apply movement, scaling, or rotation with gradual influence across a mesh, a feature long cited by Modo veterans as indispensable. The same falloff logic also drives a weight-painting mode that assigns vertex weights based on distance, useful for rigging and deformation workflows.
Workflow Support Features
Supporting these core tools are a suite of interface refinements: the ability to toggle viewport overlays, an action center that automatically sets pivot and orientation based on the active selection, a temporary workplane for precise alignment, a statistics panel for filtering by mesh attributes, and on-screen transform readouts for live feedback.
YT-Tools is available now via Gumroad for 20 USD. Installation is straightforward, and the download includes both English and Japanese documentation. For artists unwilling to give up the efficiency of Modo’s modeling environment, this add-on offers a convincing, Blender-native alternative.
