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The only place that I am aware of was the Features & Proposals section of the official wiki.

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    $\begingroup$ I think what's needed is a feature request database, rated by everyone, so that any developer can quickly take a glance and see which features are most in demand, consider which are good ideas and possible to implement, and then contribute to the extent that they are able and willing. When a feature gets implemented it should be marked as implemented so that it's always clear what has been done, and for that matter if something is not currently possible or practical it should be noted that there are not plans to implement it. This way we would have a road map of feature development progress. $\endgroup$
    – Mentalist
    Oct 3, 2015 at 3:51
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    $\begingroup$ @Mentalist - there was a site called blenderstorm that did this, the problem was there were too many ideas being added and not enough people to review/reply/manage them, perhaps managed differently it can be made to work - see: wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/… for extended answer. $\endgroup$
    – ideasman42
    Oct 15, 2015 at 1:57

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The challenge we have in general with feature requests is that a good place to ask assumes that there is some chance of developers reading and implementing it (or at least replying to the request).

However, developers get asked for features a lot (personal emails, on blender-chat, mailing lists, on social networks even!) — so chances are, you are not even the first person to ask for it.

The ratio of people asking questions to those who can implement them is so high that its difficult to usefully manage requests.

Especially since Blender is general purpose 3D software, there are so many things you might want to do, depending on your project.

Taking this into account, here are some suggestions:

If nothing turns up:

  • Ask on rightclickselect.com
    (community run web site, currently in development)
  • Find the developer who works on this are and mail them personally, see Module Owners
  • You could look into funding the feature, Either by hiring a developer directly or contact the blender institute.

Other Remarks

There are some bigger picture topics (adding ~9 years after the this initial post). While not directly related to the question are worth being aware of.

  • Often, a single feature request is not enough information for a developer to implement a feature, there are many assumptions by the person asking the questions and surrounding context for the question that isn't part of the request. Some time often needs to be spent going back and fourth - to iron this out.
  • Often time needs to be spent evaluating why existing solutions are insufficient, sometimes the person asking the question isn't aware of those solutions and the result of the request is to point to user to the documentation (or improve the documentation / UI for features that aren't clearly exposed).

Big Picture

Regarding the whole topic of feature requests, my impression is people who push for an official site to handle feature-requests hold the assumption that the feature-requests are a bottleneck - if only developers could be contacted and prodded in the "right" direction, the software would improve at a greater pace (in some instances this may be true, yet there is more to it...). I would argue the amount of communication involved in properly handling and responding to requests risks slowing down development - or require employing people to handle such a system that might be better put elsewhere, as with many things though - a balance needs to be struck.

At the time of writing Blender has a studio where artists and developers communicate and developers work on solving artists problems. Understandably this isn't satisfying when developers are not solving your problems, yet - focus is important too, and trying to solve every ones problems at once isn't practical.

Design & contributions are not limited to employees either, there are community members who have an important role in module teams, helping developers make decisions and giving feedback. Again though, the number of people in these roles is limited.

This is not to suggest the current setup is perfect, just that from the perspective of someone working on software - attempting to handle user feedback has tradeoffs. At the end of the day, spending a lot of time communicating about a change that we might not even have time to implement isn't a great use of time. I hope this helps gives some context and keep in mind I'm writing this based on my own experience. Developers who have worked in different areas of the same software will have varying experiences and opinions on how they view user-feedback and the level of community engagement they find works well for them.

See also: handing feature requests discussion on devtalk

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    $\begingroup$ While open source projects may have different rules, in my days as a software development manager there would usually be one or more product managers and systems engineers who would manage the process of interacting with customers (users). Certainly examples are OS and large user base programs (word processing, spreadsheet), but even in finance and banking (interacting with users and engineers to translate "stupid user language" and "overly technical geeky language". $\endgroup$
    – james_t
    Feb 18, 2021 at 19:55
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If you can put your money where your mouth is, then BlenderNetwork is where you will find people willing and able to commit time and knowledge for addon development or additions to the core. If you go this route then making changes available to the public has the advantage that anyone can help bug-fix and improve such development efforts. Maintaining your own build might not be an option, without paying for long-term support.

Else you are left to the mercy of fellow blender heads to see the merit of your feature request, to the extent that they are willing to commit their own time to making it happen or help you some part of the way. A curated feature request daughter site of SE would be interesting, but don't underestimate the power of BlenderArtists, BlenderStorm, and Twitter hashtags #b3d #blender.

Requests on the wiki
It's a good idea to hunt through the current collection of feature requests, you might find yours is already on this list. If it's close enough to what you want then consider updating it or make a new one (but explain why the existing one is different).

Presentation and content of feature request
First impressions matter. The presentation and content of the proposal / feature request are going to be deal breakers. A good proposal has several key properties, and includes:

  • An unambiguous definition of the request,
  • A well written use-case for the request,
  • A list of well-reasoned arguments identifying why current methods are not sufficient
  • Isn't too ambitious as to require a platoon of coders to implement.

I don't know how important it is to have prominent donating users undersign the proposal, if ideas are good/useful and simple to implement the chances of success does increase.

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There's a new 3rd party site designed for this purpose:

https://rightclickselect.com

The site itself seems to be still very much in development, but it's likely the most active place for feature requests at this time.

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  • $\begingroup$ Looks like the right kind of tool to capture feature requests, but it looks so unofficial that no one is using it, not even users. However it seems to be actually official: wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/… $\endgroup$
    – Wernight
    May 11, 2017 at 14:46
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    $\begingroup$ @HarryMcKenzie I'm not sure, I'm not aware of a moderation timeout or anything like that, but I wouldn't know for sure. Someone in the blender.community discord might know? $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Dec 27, 2022 at 3:52
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I'm not sure how many of these requests are actually acknowledged, but I know that BlenderStorm is one place to request them.

Also, if you can get featured on BlenderNation for some reason (i.e. creating a funny short animation requesting the feature), that's another way.

If you would like to know what features are being added, check out BlenderGuru's "Is it in Blender Yet" list, or chat with the developers on Blenders Developer IRC channel (go to channel #blendercoders).

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  • $\begingroup$ BlenderStorm.org is not the place, it is spammy and none visit it, it is dead, maybe the developers IRC channel $\endgroup$
    – Hikaru Ai
    Jun 20, 2013 at 2:02
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    $\begingroup$ The spam is taken care of, but unfortunately you're right that no-one really uses it, apart from the login for Graphicall, which is a shame. Somehow I have not managed to find enough people willing to put in time to moderate and improve like for blender.SE. I will keep BlenderStorm running, but it is also up to the community to participate. Feature requests don't write themselves, and even less so implement themselves. Attitude like this answer won't help. Instead stand up and join. $\endgroup$
    – jesterKing
    Jun 20, 2013 at 3:34
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    $\begingroup$ I think the main reason why BlenderStorm isn't used could be because people assume it's still spammed and useless and dead. Personally, I'd be happy to implement a feature here and there as an addon if someone wrote up a proper proposal and showed that there are others interested that feature. $\endgroup$
    – Greg Zaal
    Jun 20, 2013 at 12:32

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