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A scene simplifier for Blender to increase viewport performance.
Guide for version: 2025.1.x
Requirement: Blender 4.3 or above
There are two supported ways to install the add-on:
This is the recommended method for installing the add-on, as it ensures automatic updates.
Install the add-on as a Blender extension, either from the website or in the Get Extensions panel of Blender settings.
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Download the latest version .zip file from the Release page. Do not download the code from the repository! Only use the .zip files in the Release page.
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The install the .zip file (do not extract the package) as a as a standard Blender addon. Alternatively, the add-on can be installed manually as a standard Blender Extension.
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Activate the Mustard Simplify tab pressing N in viewport and selecting the Simplify tab on the right.
Click on Simplify Scene to disable features of the scene and the objects that are usually not needed when just animating.
An additional option, relevant only for Eevee, to simplify the Normal nodes for better Material Preview/Rendered Viewport modes performance. Remember to turn this off before rendering!
In the Options, we can:
- choose to activate/deactivate Blender Simplify when the Simplify Scene is active. Some additional options are available to control this function
- specify features to be simplified. For instance, if drivers are needed in the scene, uncheck Drivers.
Additional options are available for Modifiers and Shape Keys.
In the options, the type of Modifiers to simplify can be selected. For instance, if Subdivision Surface modifiers are needed in the scene, de-select it.
A clock button on the right of each modifier enables the Execution Time feature, which estimate the time needed to evaluate all the modifiers of that specific type in the scene. If the button is red, it means that the modifier is affecting the scene with an estimate of more than 100 ms per frame. In general, it means that this modifiers are slowing down the Viewport evaluation considerably, and should be considered as Simplify targets.
Several options are available for Shape Keys.
Firstly, there is a distinction between Driven Shape Keys (i.e., the value is driven by a Driver or an Animation Keyframe) and Not-Driven Shape Keys. Their options are completely independent.
- Global Settings: these are available only for non-driven Shape Keys.
- Disable only when Null: if active, only non-driven shape keys with value = 0 are muted; if disabled, all non-driven shape keys are muted.
- Driven Shape Keys: these are available for driven Shape Keys, and they are independent of Global Settings.
- Disable if with Animation Key-Frames: animation driven shape keys are muted when this option is active; otherwise they are left un-muted regardless of their value and Global Settings.
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Disable if with Drivers: drivers driven shape keys are muted when this option is active; otherwise they are left un-muted regardless of their value and Global Settings.
- Disable only when Null: if active, driver driven shape keys are muted only of their current value is null; otherwise all drivers driven shape keys are muted.
In some cases, we do not want to simplify every Object in the scene. With exceptions we can remove some Objects from the simplification process.
There are two kind of Exceptions, Objects and Collection. We can set both of them, and the resulting exceptions will be the combined effect of those two, i.e., using Objects does not prevent the addition of the exception collection.
Objects can be added to the list, and we can modify their individual exceptions. For instance, I can add a Camera object and decide to disable only its drivers; and a mesh object and decide to skip simplify on all features.
In case we need to exclude an entire collection to the simplification process, add a collection in the field.
Note that all Object features in the collection will not be simplified.
Note: The Collection exception has precedence on single Object exceptions. This means that Objects in the collection are not simplified in any of its features, regardless of the settings in the Objects exception tab. In fact, if an object contained in the exception collection is added to the object exceptions, its settings will be disabled and a red icon will appear in the Object list. This should help debug any issue that might appear if we add Objects and a collection at the same time.
This section is shown only if at least one Modifier has been flagged to be evaluated with the Modifier settings Time estimate button.
In this section, an estimate of the time needed to evaluate the enabled modifiers (see Modifier settings Time estimate button) is provided.
With the Enable Animations Update, the execution time is updated while the animation plays. The frequency of this evaluation can be set with the Update Frame-rate slider.
On the right of the Enable Animations Update, there is a button that can be used to update the execution times manually. This can be useful if the animation is not playing.
Note: use Enable Animations Update only when the execution time is needed, and disable it otherwise. In fact, especially with scenes with many objects and modifiers, it can impact the Viewport playback performance substantially. However, the number of modifiers set in the Modifiers settings does not affect the amount of performance overhead of the Enable Animations Update.
In this section some additional settings can be found:
- Textures Size Limit: set a limit to the texture size that Blender can render. This is exactly the same setting that can be found in Blender settings. Note that this is activated as soon as a value is chosen, and not when Simplify Scene is activated.
Some additional tools to clean the scene are available. Note that most of them act destructely on the Objects, i.e., removing data that can not be retrieved (although Undo is available). Thus make a backup before using these tools!
This tool removes Objects data blocks that are used mainly to produce mesh/models (e.g., Diffeomorphic data), and might affect viewport performance. Depending on the scene, the tool can boost performance sensibly (up to 2x in some cases).
Additional add-on settings can be changed in the add-on settings, in the Blender Preferences.
They can be found either in the Add-on section, or in the Extensions section clicking on the upper right button near the Mustard Simplify addon name and selecting Details.
- Advanced: this option adds additional advanced options, that are usually not interesting for the majority of users.
- Debug: this option adds several debug messages in the console. Enable this only in case of issues, or if requested by the maintainer of the add-on when reporting a bug.