Blender Grease Pencil started as a tool that animators could be used to draw notes and arcs directly in the viewport. Grease Pencil allows you to draw freehand sketches, annotations and remarks in most of the editors in Blender. Everything is saved with the file, so it can be seen at any time. Since its first inception, the tool has taken on a different life, with much more advanced features.
Grease Pencil can be used to create 2D animations in a 3D space. It’s actually a pretty incredible tool. The animations created with it take one that hand-drawn feel that is difficult to achieve with 3D software.
While Grease Pencil is being updated for the Blender 2.8 release, Daniel M Lara offers up a sneak look into some of the new features that are being worked on. Blender Grease Pencil development is currently focusing on three main areas. The first is a dedicated workspace that is specifically designed for 2d animators. Another is having the 2D elements as true 3D objects in Blender’s viewport. “The main focus is to create a more friendly interface for the 2D artist, while keeping the advantages of having a full 3D suite underneath.” Daniel mentions. Lastly, the team is developing new tools to support those workflows, including improvements to brushes and drawing tools.
Credits go to the Grease Pencil developers Antonio Vazquez and Joshua Leung. While Daniel Martinez Lara and Matias Mendiola support the developers with demos and testing. Right now development is happening off of the greasepencil-object branch of Blender 2.8. Soon it will be merged so that everyone can have a try at testing using the build-bot. Exciting for sure!
