[Bf-animsys] Grease pencil and Storyboarding

Mon Mar 9 14:53:32 CET 2015

Hey Joshua,

Thanks so much again for your effort to continue improving Grease Pencil, and thanks to take into account some of my feedbacks and proposal. Good work! I've been testing the updates for 2.74 release and this is what I found so far:

A - EDITING:

1.- It is possible to copy (CtrlC) and paste (CtrlV) selected strokes (or actually, selected points/segments) (c080572). This can be used for copying strokes between different layers, frames, or even different Grease Pencil datablocks.
> Works great copying on the same or different frames and layers but fail copying on other GP datablocks (I reported a BUG here: https://developer.blender.org/T43942)

2.- AltS can now be used to adjust the pressure values of selected stroke points. This provides a way to modify the thickness of strokes. 
3 .- L can also be used to activate the Select Linked functionality now
> Great ideas for better consistency with other edition tool in Blender! 

Added an operator to duplicate the active layer (d5f3aee)
> Very useful and time saver tool

B - DRAWING TOOLS:

1.- When drawing with "Continuous Drawing" enabled, it is now possible to quickly use the eraser for one-off strokes without exiting the drawing mode, starting again with the eraser, and then exiting and returning to the original mode. (18e849b)
> Great update! I love it. Right now the only way to use that with the pen tablet is holding right button on the pen to switch modes, but I wonder if this could be switch using some keyboard shortcut. What is your idea to support better the tablets?

2.- The appearance of the eraser has been improved, to make its purpose clearer (da78d2d74255)
> The icon disappear when you are erasing without holding right button. Example: When you select ERASE and then click (left button) with the mouse or use a pen tablet without holding right button, the eraser still works but don't show the icon. (I reported a BUG here: https://developer.blender.org/T43941)

3.- F can be used to control the size of the eraser in Strokes Edit Mode (ab3f037)
> Thanks to include that! I Love it. Anyway right now you can only tweak the size on edit mode but not when you are already erasing. This could be possible?

C - UI TWEAKS:

1.- Color swatches for both Stroke and Fill colors are now shown (155bb05)
> OK.

2.- Grease Pencil data and layers are now shown in the Outliner (68fc2e2)
> Amazing! Grease Pencil is started treated as any other object in Blender. Way to go!. I noticed that the outliner only show the currently used GP datablock, not all of them if there are. This is the intended behaviour? If we show every GP datablock on outliner, could be a fast shorcut to change between them. What do you think?

3.- Vertex size and color are now themable, as is the color of Grease Pencil keyframes in the timeline (c50003c)
> OK.

D - VIEWPORT RENDERING:

1.- In order to fix T43149 (i.e. tessellated triangle lines showing up in filled regions when using light colors on a dark background), the per-polygon smoothing has been disabled. To avoid jagged edges on the edges of filled regions and volumetric strokes, enable Viewport Multisampling (found under User Preferences -> System)
> Thanks again to solve this!

2.- Fixed bug where strokes with only a single point were getting drawn with what were often described as "large square dots". The cause was that for single point strokes, the pressure values were getting ignored. (813dcb9)
> Great!

I love how GP is turning out. Keep up the good work coming Joshua!

Regards
Matias

  From: Joshua Leung 
  Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2015 2:29 AM
  To: Discussion list to assist animation developers 
  Subject: Re: [Bf-animsys] Grease pencil and Storyboarding

  Hi Matias,

  Thanks for the feedback :)

  Re - Bugs:

  1) Yep, I've noticed it too. I thought it was just me, but apparently not :) 

  2) Not intentional. Fixed in master now.

  Re - Primary Features:

  1) For viewport effects, it would be better/faster to contact Antony (psy-fi).

  2) Better fills (without the artifacts we're getting now - like incorrect fills in concave areas, and the bug above) are something I will look into. The current GL_POLYGON based technique was intended as a quick first pass so that we at least had some way of doing this, which works for a decent number of scenarios.

  3) These will be looked into :)

  4) I'm looking for ideas about how exactly artists would like/expect this to work, and how that would fit into their workflows :)

  Re proposed improvements:

  1) There are some issues doing this. Perhaps the greatest one is that we can't just always use the FKEY, as it would end up blocking normal tools from working. This is especially true when not in Stroke Editing Mode (where Grease Pencil is just "on top" of everything else). Then again, if it's not going to be too much of a hassle to only be able to do this in stroke edit mode, then it should be simple to add it.

  2) I'll have a look. I suspect that this won't be that useful, as the maximum size is limited by the fact that OpenGL on windows limits the maximum width of strokes drawn using the opengl primitives

  Regards,
  Joshua

  On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 4:18 AM, mendiobox <info at mendiobox.com> wrote:

    Hi Joshua Leung (and everyone here)

    I'm Matias Mendiola, the storyboard artist in Gooseberry project.

    First let me tell you that you’re doing a really great job on Grease pencil. Congratulations!
    The idea is to use Grease pencil as the main tool for storyboarding and animatic process for future Gooseberry storyboard work, so Ton told me to get on contact via this mailing list in order to give you my feedback, request, proposal, etc.

    Just to start, some notes about Grease pencil:

    Bugs:

    1. I have a weird bug using fills (seems related to NVIDIA card) on one of my computers. I created a bug report here https://developer.blender.org/T43149

    2. I notice a diferent behaviour when deleting: DEL key don't work the same way as X key to delete when editing strokes. Is this by design?

    The principal features that I'd love to have in GP soon to test for Gooseberry Storyboard (some of them are on your blog already):

    1.  DOF on Viewport OpenGL. (Now it works on Gooseberry branch but on all strokes the same no matter what distance they are to focus point)

    2. Fills only inside shapes.

    3. Brush types or Freestyle integration for more artistic and smoother lines

    4. Layers group to make easier the work on different characters/backgrounds

    Proposals to improve GP:

    1. Use F key to change eraser size (as on texture paint mode)

    2. Posibility to change the paint cursor icon to brush size (as on texture paint mode)

    Let me know anything you need for me and please be aware that I’m living on the other side of the world (Argentina), so delayed responses could happen. :)

    Best
    Matias

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