Chris Zurbrigg Releases Blue Pencil 2 With a Rewritten & Redesigned With Compatibility With Maya 2018
Maya has its own native grease pencil tool that is fairly functional. If you want a more full-featured grease pencil, the answer has always been Zubrigg’s Blue Pencil. Now, Blue Pencil 2 brings the plugin to a higher standard with new drawing tools, layers, transformations and retiming.
Blue Pencil 2 adds a wide selection of drawing tools, layers, transformations, retiming, simplified sharing and more — a powerful addition to the animator’s toolkit.
Blue Pencil 2
The comprehensive plugin for 2D drawing, animation and review has been rewritten from the group up and redesigned for a more fluid workflow. Blue Pencil 2 has been built around Maya’s Viewport 2 and offers full integration with all the latest versions of Maya.
Drawing Tools
BP 2’s new tools have been designed to speed up and improve upon the common drawing tasks that are typically required in production. The text tool lets you quickly add notes, rather than using hand drawn notes. The line tool lets you quickly add straight lines.
More Flexible Layers
Version 2 adds support for multiple layers for each camera in your scene. You can add layers to any camera easily, and hide, reposition and more layers to and from any camera.
New layer states adds another level of control, allowing animators work more focused. States can include animation, static and locked modes. In animation mode, blue pencil 2 will automatically create new frames when drawing. Static layers can contain an always-visible hold frame that can be drawn on at any time.
New Transform Tool
BP2 adds a new transform tool that lets users move, scale and rotate elements without having to redraw them frame after frame. The Transform Tool lets you for a cut or copy and paste elements the current frame or a different frame.
Retiming Tool
A new retiming tool lets users easily retime drawing in a way that animators will find familiar. You can easily shift frames left or right and set fixed spacing between frames at the click of a button.
Pricing and Availability
Blue Pencil 2 has an introductory price of $49. Learn more about BP2’s new features and feature comparison with Maya’s native grease pencil tool here.
