Steven Roselle shows off Maya’s Grease Pencil tool that sometimes flies under the radar for some users.

Sometimes in Maya, some tools are less thought of or end up flying under the radar. One of them is the Grease Pencil tool. Maya has a grease pencil tool that is useful for marking up scenes and helping with the animation. Autodesk’s Steven Roselle has a look at the GP tool and offers some insights on some working scenarios.

Maya’s Grease Pencil tool is conveniently obtainable from the toolbar of every viewport panel. It allows you to draw an image at specified frames that will overlay on top of the viewport. You can use the GP tool for simple annotation, or more complex key poses for character animation.

There are also some 3rd party tools that offer viewport pencil tools in Maya, namely Zubrigg’s Blue Pencil.