GP toolbox

Blender addon - Various tool to help with grease pencil in animation productions.

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Demo video

Readme Doc in French (Documentation en Français et plus détaillée)

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Description

In sidebar (N) > Gpencil > Toolbox

Addon preferences

important point of addon preferences:

Set path to the palette folder (there is a json palette IO but you an also put a blend and use a blend importer)

Note about palette : For now the importer is not working with linked palette as it's not easy for animator (there are properties of the material you cannot access and the link grey-out fade the real color in UIlist preview)

Environnement Variables

Mainly for devellopers to set project environnement

Since 1.5.2, following environnement variable can set the project properties in toolbox preferences at register launch:

RENDER_WIDTH : resolution x
RENDER_HEIGHT : resolution y
FPS : project frame rate
PALETTES : path to the blends (or json) containing materials palettes
BRUSHES : path to the blend containing brushes to load
PREFIXES : list of prefix (comma separated uppercase letters (2), an optional tooltip can be set after :, ex: 'LN:Line, CO:color, SH:Shadow') SUFFIXES : list of suffixes (comma separated uppercase letters of 2 character, ex: 'OL,UL')
SEPARATOR : Separator character to determine prefixes, default is '_' (should not be a special regex character)

Expose native functionnality

The panel expose some attributes that are too "far" in the UI:

• Zoom 1:1 - Camera view take 100% zoom according to current scene resolution (ops view3d.zoom_camera_1_to_1)
• Zoom fit - Adjust view so camera frame takes full viewport spac (ops view3d.view_center_camera)

• In Front - the In Front property of the object to get an X-ray view
• passepartout camera - enable/disable + set opacity
• button and sliders to enable / disable / set opacity of single background camera images

Edit line opacity - Animators usually like to hide completely edit lines to have a better view of the drawing in edit/sculpt mode, lowering opacity also allows a better reading on what's selected.
This options is stored per layer per object but this apply on everything at once.

Passive action

An "on save" Handler that trigger relative remap of all path can be enabled in addon prefs (disabled by default).

function

• Mirror flip : If in cam view flip the camera X scale value (you can see and draw mnirrored to see problems)

• quick access to scene camera passepartout toggle and opacity

• quick access to scene camera background images visibility with individual references toggle.

• Basic playblast and viewport playblast:

  • dedicated resolution percentage value

  • can auto launch and/or auto open folder at finished (option in addon preferences)

• Jump to GP keyframe :

  • Choose key to Auto bind in addon prefs (since 0.9.3).

  Manual setup: Add two keymap shortcut in windows or screen(global) with indentifier screen.gp_keyframe_jump, one should have next toggled off to jump back

• GP paint cutter tool temporary switch shortcut

  • Map manually to a key with wm.temp_cutter (This one needs "Any" as press mode) or wm.sticky_cutter (Modal sticky-key version)

• Snap cursor to GP canvas operator accessible with view3d.cusor_snap

  • Map nanually (might be autoreplaced according to version) by replacing entry using view3d.cursor3d in 3D View category (defaut shortcut Shift + Right-clic)

• Follow cursor toggle : When activated the cursor follow the active the active object

• breakdowner operator for object mode, auto-keymap on : Shift + E

• Line extender help closing gaps between lines with control over layer target (-> need also control over frame targets)

• GP copy paste : world space cut-copy-paste (bake strokes). Ctrl + Shift + X/C/V Store strokes in os'clipboard (easier cross blend copy) cutting is use a more user friendly (leave boundary points of left strokes untouched).
  Also Possible to copy whole selected layers.

Palette management

In material submenu you have mutliple new entry:

• Copy Materials To Selected : copy all material to other selected GP (difference with Ctrl+L > materials is that it doesn't erase materials, only append those that are not in other's materials stack)

• Load/Save Json palette : Save/load materials externally to a json file from/to the active material stack.

• Load Color palette : same as the load above exept it loads directly from a blend file (all the material that the blend contains)

• Clean materials

Shortcuts

Viewport:

• Layer Picker from closest stroke in paint mode using quick press on W for stroke (and alt+W for fills)

• Material Picker (S and Alt+S) quick trigger, change is only triggered if key is pressed less than 200ms

• F2 in Paint and Edit to rename active layer

• Insert add a new layer (same as Krita)

• Shift + Insert add a new layer and immediately pop-up a rename box

• page up / page down change active layer up/down with a temporary fade (settings in addon prefs)

• Shift + E breakdown animation in object Mode

• Ctrl + Shift + X/C/V - Worldspace cut/copy/paste selected strokes/points:

Dopesheet:

• Ctrl + Shift + X Cut and send to layer

• Ctrl + Shift + D Duplicate and send to layer

Sculpt:

• point/stroke filter shortcut on 1, 2, 3 as toggles (similar to edit mode native shortcuts)

Where ?

Panel in sidebar : 3D view > sidebar 'N' > Gpencil

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Consult Changelog here