This is a guide in my personal most optimal way to animate fbf in Blender 3d ver 4.3. I find it has potential for very big things with multi frame editing and the access to modifiers. Hopefully this article will be updated as I dive deeper into the whole process. This workflow is very promising for actual frame by frame animation even on advanced levels.
Setup
- First up you start up a new file picking the 2d template:
2. right click on the tools and change the shortcuts to something that work for you for the tools you are working with to make switching easier
3. In the material settings you can select just stroke or also fill so you make lines and fills at the same time! Make new materials for each part of the animation you are working on. That will allow you to change lines, fills or whatever else you want to that particular material across the whole animation!
4. The Data panel is where your layers are. You can hide/show onion skin there, lock or unlock layers. You can create clipping masks here to refer to other layers and draw below them. You should also enable autolock inactive layers so you are always sure you are drawing on the correct layer.
5. Set up more undo steps for while you are drawing in edit > preferences > system under the memory/ limits tab
6. In the same preferences tab as above in the get extensions install svg exporter if you want to export svg animation sequences and grease pencil tools. Grease pencil tools enable you to rotate the canvas while drawing using ctrl+alt+middle mouse button
7. for every grease pencil object you make you can add modifiers ranging from multiple strokes to totally custom geometry node setups. If you want more different modifiers on different drawings you will have to think ahead and make a new grease pencil object.
8. enable stroke stabilization here for your brushes
9. “F” changes your stroke width or radius
10. In the data tab you can edit your onion skin settings to whatever your prefer.
11. In the timeline you should see your keyframes. you can select them, move them, scale with “S” and so much more. On the lower right is the start and end of your animation. (if you do not see the timeline keyframe select the stroke in the scene collection and it should show up )
If you want to interpolate between two objects you just select one keyframe, copy it with ctrl + c and paste it into the timeline. Feel free to edit the second keyframe location or shape in sculpt mode:
Back in Draw Mode, select all the keyframes again and move the location of the timeline to where you want it to start-
then go to draw>interpolate sequence
(you have some pretty cool interpolate options, you can step your animation on different framerate but also change the dynamic of the interpolation)
and voila!
12. When exporting either SVGs, PNGs or whatever sequences remember to show only the layer you want to export and also enable “transparent” so you do not export the background color as well:
13. You can save this new file as overwritten 2d Animation default here so it is always the same when you open up Blender
Animation
I animate using a Huion with a mini dial for faster animation.
- Shift + Middle Mouse Button allow me to move around the timeline
2. Ctrl + Alt + Middle Mouse allow me to rotate the canvas. ( remember to instal grease pencil tools in “Get Extensions” to enable this )
3. Shift+ I Makes a new keyframe where my timeline is for easy blank new keyframes and arrows left and right to move about the timeline.
4. I have my tool shortcuts I custom made from before ( you change it by right clicking on the tool and choosing “change shortcut”:
5. The rest are just ctrl + z to undo and ctr + shift + z to redo and a delete button
6. Fill in tool is great. You can set the precision to 2 because it often gives better results. If you go to advanced and enable gap closure you can fill in areas that are not completely closed. You can preview the gap fill closure by pressing the fill in where you want to fill, holding it and scrolling with the middle mouse button to adjust. Do not forget you also have multi frame editing so you can fill in multiple drawings at the same time.
7. You can make your own brushes using the style>texture options for crazier results and also import brushes made by others using the file > append > brush options.
Additional Grease Pencil Shortcuts
timeline:
ctrl + I in timeline — invert keyframe selection
S — scale the keyframes in timeline
shift + R — repeat last action
E in timeline — move selected frames from the playhead
E, S and shift + T in timeline- change animation timing
stroke selection:
M — move stroke to another layer
ctrl + J — join all selected strokes
F — closes open strokes
shift + D — duplicate selected points
shift + R — repeat last action
alt + S — change stroke thickness
general
ctrl + space — full screen drawing
ctrl — alt — right click while drawing — lasso tool to cut (needs update)
y on timeline — add or change layers quickly (needs update)
U to select material
Opinions
This process is still not perfected and I will update it as I go but in my opinion Blender offers an incredibly strong and efficient way of animating fbf for a free software and it has the potential for so many incredible things to be created in 2d as well as 3d. If you can, definitely give it a spin!
Stay in tune as I will be playing with this a lot and hopefully continue to fine tune it until it is as efficient as possible. Cheers and thank you for reading!
