Moho Forum

A test of the new grease pencil functions in the upcoming Blender v2.72. Amazing. You can view the demo here:


And for those of you who wish to start playing with the beta, download the latest build of Blender here:
https://builder.blender.org/download/

The scene file: http://www.daniel3d.com/pepeland/misc/3 ... rYou.blend

Wow, that looks fantastic!

For years, I've been meaning to add Blender to our 3D pipeline for certain capabilities we're lacking, but I never thought of Blender as 2D animation program before. Man, when I have time, I need to look at Blender more closely. Thanks for sharing that video.

G.

The official 2.73 release of Blender with the grease pencil animation is now out.

Of special interest is also the new Freestyle SVG output option for non-realistic cartoon rendering! This could be extremely valuable for Anime Studio characters: even animation is supported, so in theory we should be able to export different angles of a 2d character as vector lines, and then use those in AS.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:R ... /Freestyle

Here is a Anime music video completely done in Blender demonstrating Freestyle. Halfway in you can see the actual wireframes and shots done in BLender. Quite impressive.
http://youtu.be/PiR7KYIQv9U

A new vimeo channel for the pencil animation feature is available as well: http://vimeo.com/channels/greasepencil

One more interesting Grease Pencil test that demonstrates how simple it is to transform and adjust drawings in Blender.

I just heard that the latest 2.73 blender 2D animation is broke?!?!?

How come it's never as easy as these videos make it look when I try it? I could say the same for the Anime Studio tutorials as well...

ruscular3d wrote:I just heard that the latest 2.73 blender 2D animation is broke?!?!?

That is a very vague statement. Who told you, where did you hear or read that? And do you mean grease pencil animation in Blender, or a different type of 2d animation in Blender? Please be more explicit and clear, and we can verify your statement.

I tested the grease pencil animation in the latest 2.73 version, and it works fine for me.

Danimal wrote:How come it's never as easy as these videos make it look when I try it? I could say the same for the Anime Studio tutorials as well...

Well, that is the nature of the beast: animation is hard to do well - it takes a lot of time and effort, no matter what tool is used. Tools like Anime Studio, Blender, ToonBoom, Flash, and so on, can provide a more efficient (faster) workflow, but you will need to know how to animate.

And learning new tools can also be intimidating at times. Blender is a complicated piece of software (as is Maya, Max, Modo, etc) - it takes time to learn a 3d application. Anime Studio is relatively simple in comparison.

A couple more examples!

http://monsterjavaguns.com/blog/creatin ... st-mortem/



A very basic video tutorial demonstrating the workflow and interface.

Hi,.

Thank you for tips - very helpful. Yes, grease pencil works. The examples are impressive!

But I miss a lot improvements until grease pencil will be usefull for 2d-Animatin-Productions:

It is generally still quite cumbersome to use.
The scaling or moving of strokes allowed no positioning the mouse cursor - it works "directly", wenn the Buttons are clicked, so that some mouse movements are not possible (cursor on the edge of the image, where the menu is located).

The color settings for onion skin are ignored.

It would be desirable if there would be the option to smooth strokes when drawing.

A range of different brushes – and some effects – would be also very nice, I Think.

...

I hope that this great feature will be evolving. I think that the Blender pretty forward could - bring new possibilities and new users.

Until this, I will Play with Grease Pencil as it is.
Greetings

rave wrote:Hi,.

Thank you for tips - very helpful. Yes, grease pencil works. The examples are impressive!

But I miss a lot improvements until grease pencil will be usefull for 2d-Animatin-Productions:

The developers responsible for these grease pencil improvements are continuing to add more features. So we will have to wait how it all pans out, but it looks quite promising so far:
http://aligorith.blogspot.ca/2014/12/gr ... admap.html

rave wrote: It is generally still quite cumbersome to use.
The scaling or moving of strokes allowed no positioning the mouse cursor - it works "directly", wenn the Buttons are clicked, so that some mouse movements are not possible (cursor on the edge of the image, where the menu is located).

I am not quite following what you are trying to explain here? Transforming strokes works with the standard tools, and with those, and options such as proportional editing, it works quite fast. Would you mind giving an example?

And there is a special control configuration available to improve the overall grease pencil animation workflow as well.

rave wrote: The color settings for onion skin are ignored.

No, they are not: to activate those, you must press the colour wheel button on the right. They work.

rave wrote: It would be desirable if there would be the option to smooth strokes when drawing.

There is smooth stroke option, which is turned on in Preferences-->Editing. There is also a "Simplify Stroke" option that will automatically reduce the number of control point for the drawn curves.

rave wrote: A range of different brushes – and some effects – would be also very nice, I Think.

...

Yes, indeed. The developers are looking into incorporating the Freestyle renderer, which would open up a wealth of output possibilities.

http://themissingscarf.com/
Primarily done in Blender, with a touch of Flash.

No grease pencil, but still worth a mention here.

@herbert123,
my opinion was not to diskuss - and change arguments - for - and again - the 2d grease pencil tool in blender.
Yes, I have found the possibility to change the color settings (the colour wheel button).
And, yes, I know, that the developers are working hard to improve this tool.

My arguments should not to start a war about this tool.
I wish, that this tool will be a "usefull tool for 2d-animation productions". I think, that it has the potential for a very cool feature, to do 2d-animtaions with the possibilities of Blenders 3d-features.
Here we are in 2d-animation-forum - please, see Anime Studio (and other etablished 2d-animation-software) - with the cool possibilities to make - and correct animations.
The grease pencil tool has some very coole features. But I mean, that it needs many improvements until it will be "ready".
My feedback should be "awaking" more ideas to improve this tool (I am not looking for a "master", who can activate the smooth option for strokes in the preferences - I mean, that it would be very cool, to have a smoothness-slider - and perhaps a "smooth-brush" for the strokes of a animation - also for the line-thicknes ...).

I hope, that the diskussion about wishes for new features - and a better usuabiltity - can help to improve this cool new feature (perhaps, some 2d-animators come to blender), if it are quick and easy to use.

Happy 2d-grease-pencil-animations ...

So,
it is a Long time ago.
I remember: this: "The developers responsible for these grease pencil improvements are continuing to add more Features ..."
I have no info about the development of Grease Pencil - for me, it Looks like the development is stopped - unfortunately.
Any other Infos?