Drone Generator

Drone Generator builds photorealistic drones inside Blender, from a palm-sized folding camera drone or a 5-inch freestyle FPV quad to a crop-spraying hexacopter, a caged inspection drone, a long-endurance surveillance UAV, a tilt-rotor VTOL or an unmanned helicopter. Pick one of 45 designs modeled on real drone types, then change anything: every part is a number, a choice or a switch, and the drone rebuilds live as you drag.

Three airframe families cover the real world of drones. Multirotors come in X, plus, wide, stretched, dead cat, H and Y layouts with 3 to 16 arms, coaxial motors, folding arms and ten body styles. Fixed-wing aircraft have six fuselages, six wing planforms, eight tail types, pusher, tractor, twin and jet engines, and quadplane, octoplane, tilt-rotor and tail-sitter VTOL. Helicopters can be single-rotor, coaxial or tandem, with tail rotors or shrouded fans.

Every propeller is its own object that spins with one switch, clockwise and counterclockwise like the real thing, and the whole drone can hover and sway. Navigation LEDs and strobes glow and blink.

Features
- 45 real-world drone types in 6 families, each fully editable
- Camera, cinema, FPV racing and freestyle, cinewhoop, tiny whoop, enterprise, LiDAR, sprayer, delivery, rescue, light show and toy drones
- MALE, HALE, twin-boom, hand-launched, flying wing, stealth, loitering, target and solar UAVs
- 7 blade shapes including toroidal props, 4 motor types, prop guards, ducts and cages
- Gimbals, cinema cameras, sensor turrets, LiDAR, spotlights, speakers, spray booms, winches and cargo
- 14 color schemes, carbon weave, forged carbon, anodized metal, foam, camouflage and wear
- Spinning props, hover animation, blinking lights, motion blur discs
- Surprise, Vary and Random Finish buttons for endless new drones
- Picture-driven sidebar with icon tabs, Shift+A menu and Convert to Mesh
- Works in Cycles and EEVEE

Requires Blender 4.2 or newer. Tested on Blender 4.2, 4.5 and 5.2 LTS.

Installation

In Blender open Edit, Preferences, Get Extensions, then use Install from Disk and pick the drone_generator zip.

Usage

• Open the Drone tab in the 3D viewport sidebar (N). With no drone selected, click the big picture for a gallery of every design, pick a type tile (multirotor, fixed-wing, helicopter) or browse the designs family by family, then press Add. You can also use Shift+A, Drone.
• The card at the top shows the design, its size and rotor count. Spin turns the props, Hover adds a gentle bob; Surprise makes a new random drone, Vary changes the current one a little and the palette button picks a random finish.
• The icon tabs hold every setting: Airframe (layout, arms, body, fuselage, wings, tail), Propulsion (props, motors, guards, engines, VTOL, rotors), Landing Gear, Payload (gimbals, sensors, sprayers, cargo, turrets, hardpoints), Details (battery, GPS, antennas, sensors, LEDs, wires), Finish (color scheme, surfaces, carbon, camouflage, wear), Motion (spin speed, hover, blinking, folding pose) and Parts & Export (part visibility, detail, scale, Convert to Mesh).
• Convert to Mesh keeps the drone as plain meshes, with the spinning props parented to the body; Delete removes it with all its parts.

Real sizes are in meters. Turn on Blur Discs for renders without motion blur, or enable motion blur in Cycles to blur the spinning props.

Which Blender versions are supported?

Blender 4.2 and newer. It is tested on Blender 4.2, 4.5 and 5.2 LTS.

Do the propellers spin?

Yes. Every prop and rotor is a separate object with a looping spin animation, turning clockwise or counterclockwise like a real drone. Set the speed in the Motion tab; the hover animation bobs and sways the whole drone.

Can I edit the result as a normal mesh?

Yes. Convert to Mesh in the Parts & Export tab turns the drone into plain mesh objects, ready to edit, rig or export. The props stay separate so they can still spin.

Does it make only quadcopters?

No. It makes multirotors with 3 to 16 arms, coaxial and Y6 frames, fixed-wing UAVs from hand-launched planes to jet-powered and stealth designs, VTOL quadplanes, tilt-rotors and tail-sitters, and unmanned helicopters.