Installation

Cats is a Blender extension. It runs on Blender 5.0, 5.1 and 5.2, and one build covers all three.

Install from the release zip

1. Download cats_blender_plugin-<version>.zip from the latest release. Keep it zipped: Blender installs the archive itself.

2. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions.

3. Click the dropdown at the top right of the window and pick Install from Disk.

4. Select the zip. Blender installs and enables the extension.

5. In the 3D Viewport, press N to open the sidebar and click the CATS tab.

Unsupported Blender versions

The manifest declares Blender 5.0 as the minimum and stops before 5.3, so Blender will not offer Cats to other versions. The add-on also checks the version when it loads and refuses to start outside that range. For Blender 4.x and older, use the upstream release line made for your version.

What Cats asks permission for

Extensions declare what they need. Cats asks for two permissions:

Permission	Why
Files	Import and export model files, and cache translation data.
Network	Download translations and check for add-on updates.

Translation through Google and update checking are the only features that use the network.

Update Cats

When a new release is out, a notice appears at the top of the Quick Access panel with Update Now, Remind me later and Ignore this version. You can also check by hand in Settings & Updates. Either way, Cats installs the update through Blender’s own extension installer, then asks you to restart Blender.

You can also download the new zip yourself and install it over the old version with Install from Disk.

Build it from a checkout

If you work on the add-on itself, you can build the zip from a clone of the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Zaphkiel-Ivanovna/cats-blender-plugin-unofficial.git
cd cats-blender-plugin-unofficial
blender --command extension build

Blender writes cats_blender_plugin-<version>.zip next to the manifest. Install it with Install from Disk as above.

Next step

Follow the quick start to take a model from import to a VRChat-ready avatar.