Grease Pencil Tools

A set of tools for Grease Pencil drawing.

Activation

  • Open Blender and go to Preferences then the Add-ons tab.

  • Click Object then Grease pencil tools to enable the script.

Tools

Box Deform

Create a deformation box around Grease Pencil strokes. Press Ctrl-T to launch the deformation mode.

The operational scope depends on the mode:

  • Object Mode: the whole Grease Pencil object is deformed.

  • Edit Mode: deform the selected points.

  • Draw Mode: deform the last strokes only.

Shortcuts available during deformation:

  • Spacebar/ Return to confirm.

  • Delete/ Backspace/ Ctrl-T/ Tab (twice) to cancel.

  • M to toggle between Linear and Spline mode.

  • 1-9 to set the subdivision level of the box.

  • Ctrl-Left/ Ctrl-Right to subdivide the box incrementally on the X axis and Ctrl-Up/ Ctrl-Down on the Y axis.

Rotate Canvas

Perform a rotation of the view in free navigation or active camera in camera view.

  • Maintain Ctrl-Alt-MMB to rotate view (customizable in add-on preferences).

  • Click and release immediately to reset view.

Layer Navigator

Continuous press on Y shortcut call a customized layer popup with following features:

  • Active layer always pop under mouse when called.

  • Active layer is changed by hovering, without any click.

  • Layers can be reordered with simple drag-and-drop.

  • Layer opacity, hide and lock states can be tweaked in popup.

  • Placing mouse outside popup limits will fade inactive layers, useful to quickly inspect content.

  • The plus button on the right adds a new layer.

Extra shortcuts are enabled while layer navigator is up:

  • H toggle all hide.

  • L toggle all lock.

  • T toggle auto-lock.

  • X toggle In Front value of the object.

  • RMB or Esc to reset original active layer.

Layers box height, width, font size, and left-handed mode are customizable in add-on preferences.

Timeline Scrub

Call a timeline popup at mouse position to scrub without leaving the 3D viewport.

Default shortcut to call the timeline is Alt-MMB. The shortcut enable the scrubbing when hovering timeline editors as well (dope-sheet, sequencer, etc).

Scene start/end and keyframes are represented with symbols on the timeline.

While scrubbing, pressing Ctrl key Snap time cursor on keyframes.

There are several settings to customize visual aspect and behavior in addon preferences:

  • “Always Snap” checkbox invert the snapping behavior.

  • Special “Rolling” mode is available. It displays keyframes with a constant spacing, discarding timing data when scrubbing back and forth. This is useful for quick flipping between keyframes.

  • Filter to restrict the key display and snapping to Grease Pencil frames only.

  • Change shortcut and choose to propagate it to timeline editors

  • Customizable colors, frame spacing and amount of displayed information.

Straighten Stroke

Straighten the stroke between first and last point. The influence can be tweaked in the redo panel.

The scopes for this tool are:

  • Last stroke in Grease Pencil Paint Mode.

  • Selected stroke in Grease Pencil Edit Mode.

Tip

Straight Influence Reset

The influence percentage is stored for next use. Use Shift-LMB on the button to reset influence to full.

Brush Pack Installer

Install included Grease Pencil textured brush pack (made by Daniel Martinez Lara). This is available in Draw Mode in the Brushes panel.

Note

This feature will be removed once the Blender Asset Browser has support for brushes.

Reference

Category:

Object

Description:

Set of tools for Grease Pencil drawing.

Location:

3D Viewport ‣ Sidebar ‣ Grease Pencil

File:

greasepencil_addon folder

Author:

Samuel Bernou, Antonio Vazquez, Daniel Martinez Lara, Matias Mendiola

License:

GPL

Note:

This add-on is bundled with Blender.