Has there been a course or other form of resource that can serve as an intro into learning how to make an addon?
Not sure if its a complicated process or as simple as wrapping a scripts functionality into blenders UI and registering it as an addon to be loaded up on start-up.
I don't think there's ever been a course on that topic in CG Cookie. There's been coding courses and there's one in production right now I think, but not specifically on how to get an addon in Blender from beginning to end. Maybe the folks on the Blender Market can have some information about that? You can shoot them an email for sure.
Basically once you have a working script that can be ran in the text editor you can turn it into an addon(Pre 4.2) or extension(4.2+). To convert to an addon add the following to the top of the script and fill it in with your data. You can get this from blender 2.6 thru 4.1. Go to text editor and click Template(Older version it is under Text) then python then Addon Add Object. This still works even in 4.4(At least in current alpha download).
bl_info = {
"name": "New Object",
"author": "Your Name Here",
"version": (1, 0),
"blender": (2, 80, 0),
"location": "View3D > Add > Mesh > New Object",
"description": "Adds a new Mesh Object",
"warning": "",
"doc_url": "",
"category": "Add Mesh",
}
For Extensions this info is now in a manifest file and your script has to have a "__init__.py" (Without the quotes) and be in a directory. It's a lot more complicated as far as creating it compared to before, but it's not that difficult. I mean I've create some addons and an extension and I haven't even sat down and learned python. I do have experience with other programming languages though. The templates and developers extra help. For more information on creating extensions here is the blender page regarding it. You can get this link from the same template in 4.2 or newer.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/extensions/getting_started.html
Interesting, I honestly didnt even realize that we now have 'extensions', havent really being much attention to it.
But was able to get that setup pretty easily enough.
Seems to me like they intend to move away from the whole legacy addon's and shift to the new extension system entirely.