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Blender 2.83: Grease Pencil

Completely rewritten from scratch, the new Grease Pencil is much faster and better integrated with Blender. (29f3af9527)

Drawing Engine

  • FPS improvement for files with high amount of strokes.
  • Blender Lights now affect Grease Pencil objects materials.
  • VFX results are zoom independent and look the same in viewport or render.
  • Better management of alpha avoiding all known issues.
  • Update Viewport shading modes for better consistency with meshes.
  • Mask system refactor.
  • Smoother Drawing of Fast Strokes.
  • Better Stroke Quality when drawing hard angles.

Smooth lines even in tightest strokes

  • Grease Pencil shader Updates:
    • UI and names updates.
    • Fill checkerboard was removed.
    • Add Alpha control to stroke and Fill Base colors.

User Interface

  • Updated 2D Animation template

2D Animation Template

  • Full review of Grease Pencil Brushes UI (topbar and Properties Editor) for consistency with other Blender brushes.
  • Review of Brush presets to improve drawing experience.
  • Control to activate the use of Blender lights in Grease Pencil objects.
  • New Materials preset.
  • Modifiers, Updates UI to be more consistent with other Blender Modifiers.
  • New context menus.
    • Animation (I key).
    • Change the Active Layer (Y key).
  • New Active Layer selector in Brushes context menu.
  • New Toggle to scale the stroke thickness while editing strokes.
  • New Masks List view.
  • Dopesheet, Remove Active Only control, now it shows only Grease Pencil that are in the current scene.
  • Overlays updates.
    • New Material Name option.
    • New Vertex Paint opacity.
    • New Show Stroke Directions (Moved from Viewport Diplay in Properties panel).
    • Fade objects and Grease Pencil objetcs updates.
    • Grid now is occluded by 3D geometry if the geometry is in front.

Operators

  • New Operators for Materials and Vertext color.
  • New Merge Similar Materials operator.
  • New Reset fill transform.
  • Updates in Paint operators to better result when drawing fast strokes.

Tools

  • New complete Vertex Paint Mode Tools.

Vertex Paint Tools

  • Sculpt and Weight Paint brushes and are now real Blender Brushes.
  • Sculpt, Weight and Vertex Paint brushes now support all types of falloff curves.
  • Eyedropper tool now support the creation of Materials or Palettes color.
  • New Transform Fill tool to adjust UV.
Transform Fill tool
  • New Tint tool for adding vertex color while in Draw Mode.
Tint tool
  • Draw brushes, color toggle to use Base color material or Vertex Color.

Modifiers

  • Updated Modifiers UI to be more consistent with other Modifiers in Blender.
  • Influence Filters updates.
    • Panel was unified and more compact for all modifiers.
    • New Custom Curves to shape the modifier effect along the strokes.
  • Tint Modifier, add color Gradient functionality.

Tint Modifier using an Empty to control the new gradient mode

  • Array Modifier, removed Keep on top option.
  • Multiple Strokes modifier, Removed Angle Split from.
  • Tint, Opacity and HSV modifiers, Removed Create Material option.
  • Now modifiers support Link operator to duplicate between objects. (d8c3aad800)

VFX

  • Effects only visible in Render mode.
  • Blur VFX, Camera Depth of field improvements and add blur rotation.
  • Colorize VFX, add Mix factor for all the modes.
  • Glow VFX, add Blend modes, size and rotation.
  • Swirl VFX, Removed Transparent option.
  • Removed Light VFX (now replaced with the use of Blender Lights).