[Bf-committers] About design on grease pencil object

[blendergit at gmail.com]

Hi,

As you probably know, we are working to implement new grease pencil object and the use of new draw manager and more new gp stuff. 

Recently, I uploaded a new branch “greasepencil-object” base on “blender2.8” branch to blender.org git server with the code we are working on.

Daniel M. Lara (pepeland), Matias Mendiola and I have been thinking in a better workflow and we have found some topics that need a decision. I had some conversation on IRC about them, but I want to share them in the mailing list and get more feedback before take any action:


1) Currently, in 3D view you can create GP strokes at scene or object level. With the new grease pencil object, it not makes sense to have GP at scene level and we can remove it. 

To have GP at scene level only adds complexity to design and make more confuse the use of grease pencil for artists. There is only a concern about add-ons that are using grease pencil at scene level, but as Blender 2.8 will require a review of current add-ons, we think this is not a big issue. 

Of course, the old files with grease pencil at scene level will be converted to new grease pencil object when they are opened in Blender 2.8.

2) Grease pencil has two uses, animation and annotations. Annotations in 3D can be supported by the automatic creation of a GP object (this is the approach of other 3D programs of the market). Besides, the use of GP object for annotations adds functionalities as hide, move, scale, rotate, organize, etc.
            
For 2D annotations (Node Editor, VSE, etc.) we can keep a basic functionality, but we will not support new drawing features, only basic support to add notes.

The availability to draw animations in different context is a source of misunderstanding for new users. We think to keep the animation workflow in the 3D viewport is the way to follow.


We would like to hear your opinions and ideas.


Best Regards,
Antonio Vazquez (antonioya)