CURSOR SNAPPER Addon - V 1.0 RELEASE + Workflow Tutorial - Blender Grease Pencil

hi everyone welcome to the version 1 release of our cursor snapper add-on for grease pencil for blender the function of the add-on is actually very simple but what it does allows us to unlock a massive amount of potential in the cursor method of placing our grease pencil drawing because the 3d cursor doesn't actually require any object keyframes for the grease pencil it enables a very freeform kind of way of working when you place the cursor you draw you place the cursor you draw wherever you want it in 3d space so you can kind of really feel out a pathway through an environment it's a way of working that i personally find really exciting because i find it very liberating not having to deal with object keys and then the you know the whole thing with sliding versus stepped that's a non-issue anymore so as you can see from the uh the videos i'm showing here at the moment the character is moving through 3d space very much in the way that the object mode can do that but there are no object keys here and you can see here because i've got the onion skin on you can actually see the whole path running through the environment ed and i went back and forth on this for quite a while trying to figure out the best methods for making a really nice nice workflow this video is kind of a workflow and an add-on together they go hand in hand you wouldn't be much good just putting the add-on out and not describing how i incorporate into the workflow because they really are entwined to get the add-on i'll be leaving a link in the video description for you to follow please click that link that will take you to the product page on ed white gumroad the version one is free for everyone i really want everyone to get our hands on this and start playing with it if you do find it useful and you want to toss a coin to the gum road then please feel free uh we'd appreciate that also if you haven't already hop over to ed white white3d on youtube and uh give him a subscribe and check out uh his up and coming storyboard and animatic add-on head's a good guy worked hard on this add-on god bless you ed once you've got the add-on downloaded then you know the drill go to edit preferences add-ons install find where you've saved it click it install it it'll come up here cursor cursor snapper click it on and you're in nicely installed and we're ready to go okay so let's dig into the workflow let me show you where the add-on is over on the right of your viewport here go to view and down on the bottom of that is a add-on called 3d cursor snapper and in that we have the grease pencil grid you can switch on and off we have the assign button it's very very simple ui and you don't actually need it right now okay so the first part of the process is all to do with blenders cursor placement down on the bottom here in the timeline i've got a object keyframe timeline here the normal playback one and i've also got a grease pencil one so you can see then for yourself that there are no object keyframes it's all on the grease pencil as normal we use shift and right click to place the to move the cursor wherever you want it to be i love this cursor tool it's got so much utility in so many uh different ways so then we press shift a to make our grease pencil object so very important now in this method is to pay close attention to your canvas if your canvas is not on we've actually added a shortcut here called grid in our language so you can press that and it comes on off on off remember the settings for the for the canvas are actually down here in your grease pencil object scroll down to the bottom and you can change you know the color of it the size of it the scale of it the width now what you need to do is just pay attention to how tall um your character is going to be on that grid i found the easiest way to keep track of volume was to use the grid and just stick to it so then we need to switch into draw mode tab draw mode make sure i got my ink and my black sorted now at the top these are really important all right so 3d cursor is the setting we want instead of an origin or surface origin is essential when using the object mode that's the way to keep everything consistent but in this mode this is all about 3d cursor for the timing i'm just going to stick with front elevation because it's just simpler for the kind of the first rough like layout pass and then once i get into like setting up some cameras then i go into view mode so that i'm always the correct angle from the camera okay so now i'm gonna start drawing in my character this is gonna be super super loose um i got serious lag when i tried drawing while recording so i'm just gonna just gonna keep this really really loose guys right so um yeah just blocking the volume here i've decided i'm gonna keep this character like say roughly three three grids high as a general kind of proportion and try and stick with that once i've got my first keyframe then i want to move the timeline along to say 10 frames long i'm just going to do 10 frame increments probably move the cursor and then i start drawing my new position i'm doing this super loose super free form and just place the cursor do my sketch i'm not this is very much to me like the layout portion of the the exploration you know it's like i just want to feel my way around the scene i want to throw my character about i just want to think right is he going to go over here he's going to kind of run over here he's going to dive over there what's the path of action you know um what kind of terrain are we going up and down on terrain we going left and right what i kind of like about this method is if i had to do this in the object mode i would have to be keying all these kind of like he goes here he goes left he goes right he goes up he goes down and i'm keying all that stuff and then i kind of have to i found with the object mode for stuff like that you kind of end up fighting the object keys with the grease pencil keys so doing it this way as you can see the way i'm working here now it's just very freeform i'm not i don't have to think at all about object keys and so i'm just placing the cursor i'm drawing in my little doodle my little squiggly doodle doesn't matter how loose it is right now these are almost just like coordinates you can think of as well right you're just kind of laying out roughly what's the coordinate of the path that you are then going to use to snap to and even though i've kind of kept the camera roughly the same angle here you don't have to you have the freedom to just move the camera around wherever you want it's only when i start like actually thinking about what camera angle i would shoot the action from then i start refining character placement and then using the view mode to um to draw the proper character like tie down art or something on it right so at the moment i'm still throwing him about the place i'm having some fun i'm thinking where can he go and go over here he can run he can dive he can roll he can jump now i've been a naughty boy but there you can see my my um i'm my proportion is way off on that right he's i've only drawn him two grids high on that particular one which is a bit sloppy so yeah slap wrist for that one so he's i've kind of taken him all the way over there now and i bounced him against that rock and now he's kind of like going to do a dive backwards you can see i'm placing the cursor where i want um his position to be relative to the ground so it projects the the cursor the the canvas up from the ground so you always know that like even if someone's jumping if you've got the cursor on the ground then um they're in the air above that cursor so here's my main sample scene using that same process all right so i'll just the keys are already done i'm just going to run you through how i placed them down this is the rough layer first right so this is my equivalent of what i've just shown you there before this this main sequence all right so here he is running along here now in in order to do that i placed the cursor i drew the character i then placed the cursor i drew the character place the cursor draw the character place the you know move along place okay so that's that's the momentum right that's the that's the workflow so you can do that across any terrain up down left right in out however you want it right as long as you kind of idea to or keep in mind the you know the general volume what you've got going on with the character then you should be fine then when we get right to the end i think is where it really starts to demonstrate how free flow you can get right so this now is absolute free flow in 3d space right all of this stuff here and then this bit here if i pop out with the camera so you can see this and you can see then exactly where he is in space right so this was all done by the same method i showed you which is you place the cursor you make your drawing you place your cursor you make the draw and you place the cursor and make the drawing and then what you get is this like here he is right he's flowing through 3d space so back to the start now then right so let's say i've done my rough layout now just as a reminder here at the moment i've got this set the 3d cursor view because i'm now in the camera so i've already done all my setup with my cameras i'm not going to talk about that you can go and watch my other videos if you want to learn how i think about cameras uh this is purely about the workflow of the 3d cursor so now i've got my rough okay so you're going okay so you've done all this without the add-on right yes i've done all this without the add-on so far now crucially here's the reason why we need the add-on if i press up and down here to flick through my keys you can see the cursor and the canvas therefore doesn't move so when you're moving forward for the first time you're drawing somewhere you don't need the add-on but if you ever want to get back to where you are there's quite a few steps you actually have to take by default which the cursor add-on removes so how do we actually use set up the cursor snapper and then use it because what i essentially want to do here now is i want to bounce back to all of my keyframes whenever i want to i want to be able to refine them and if i make new layers i also want to then be able to still bounce through those coordinates whilst drawing on another layer the first thing is you have to you select the thing in object mode right you select the grease pencil in object mode and then you come over here and you press assign okay so that will then i've got um a bunch of layers here normally you'll only have say your rough layer to begin with so i'm going to select my rough layer and i press assign and that then shows up on here right so you've got locked object so it's just called stroke because i'm named anything and then the lock layer is rough now what will happen is if i either press the previous key or next key it will jump to the next key or previous key and it will also jump the cursor and the canvas to the exact coordinate of the artwork on that layer right now it does that in one of three ways so the one is first so if i click select first and do it you'll see that it kind of pops it to the point where you first drew a stroke personally i like center because it just kind of centers everything around roughly the mass of the vertices that are there and then the final setting is base so what that will do is step to the bottom can you see that so it'll always kind of choose a one of the lowest or the lowest vertices of the artwork this is particularly useful when you're on the ground so so it's always kind of like the lowest point to the ground so keep it on center and then you go next now you can press those so you don't really want to be doing that you you want to because what you want to be doing here you want to be in draw mode and you still want to be able to do this and draw but not have to go back and forth at all time right there is an option but the shortcut by default is shift and up and down so in the way in the same way that up and down will cycle through your keyframes normally but it won't move the cursor uh because the snapper if you hold shift and up and down it will that's how you do it right so this is pretty much my workflow from this point on is i've just got my little finger on shift and i'm pressing up and down and then i'm you know i'm kind of refining the shape of that right jump to the next one i want to go back to the previous one but i'm in draw mode i'm not moving my pen here now my my pen stays in the position ready to draw back and forth back and forth yeah i'm very much about not leaving the uh the kind of drawing workflow as much as humanly possible that's what we're trying to do here so you can see like how you can just kind of bounce around right this is where i was talking about uh imagine having to do those like sort of work around steps this many times every time you wanted to jump back to a position it would just be an absolute nightmare right so anyway that's the principle of then getting back to that position and that's showing you how to do that on a single layer now the next thing you would logically want to do is create a new layer for your cleanup so let's create a new layer you know our last gp layer one right now i don't need to change anything to do the snapper right now i can still bounce back and forth between the keys i've already selected so i've still got locked layer rough selected and so every time i press shift and up and down it's going to bounce along to those positions which is what i want because i then want to know that my cleanup is in exactly the same coordinates as my rough and so i'm actually on the the the new layer i created whilst using those previous coordinates this is the the key to me right so so now i mean and i'll let me put the layers is it to make it yeah parfait layers on i'll go in a little closer you know this cleanup will be trash because the lag and all that but let me just demonstrate it all right all right kind of adorable actually there we go next one yeah the thing is this is what i love about it now i see right you just i mean i'm in the zone right i'm in the drawing space and if i didn't have the lag i'd be having a great time but here we go um okay right so that's probably enough to just demo what the purpose of it is right so there we go now i've got my keyframes and again as i said it's still so if i switch off just to show you if i switch off the rough layer so it's not visible anymore then you can see here they are there's my keyframes jumping along uh one thing to remember the whole shift up and down thing um it works when you're you know your kind of your pen or your attention is centered on the viewport like if i'm down here it doesn't do it you can see it's not doing anything when i'm in the viewport it does it so just remember if you're like oh why isn't the shift up and down working that's why just hold your pen over the viewport and it will work all right so then that's how you would then go along and make your your clean up layer okay so let me show my my tie down there um okay so i've still snapped to the rough here and then i made a new layer like i've just demonstrated right um and i you select the tie down layer or the clean up layer and you still then use the shift and up and down which is snap into the rough coordinates and then you're drawing your your cleaner yeah so then all the way through this and that's that's just what i did all the way through i did use did i i probably used the onion skin now and again just like you know for consistency and making sure that like the details were consistent and obviously you can do that on your rough past as well you can use the onion skin um which is really helpful i like onion skin personally you know so we're kind of like you know here he is running through the donut uh the the ritual that all blender beginners must must do it must build the donut and then dive through it yeah so all the way through this and this is just the same principle cleaned up all the way through you can see all the way through this now you know i've got the view the view mode here's where everything's facing camera um yeah and then stuff like this as well you know even if you're a high angle then so when you're through the camera view view gives you that nice projection so it's nice and clean in front of the camera um yeah i don't think there's really much more to talk about in terms of what i did for that's it right you just go and clean it all up now using this method and then the next step was to if i switch the rough off i dropped in some colors and i did that in exactly the same way i'm still snapped to the rough um the rough coordinates so once you've kind of set it up you don't have to change it i think actually when i did do my the the colors under my flats i did actually switch it to tie down so there might have been some changes you know the way i i might have manipulated some of the um positions of the lines or even the position of the character overall using edit mode um and so once you're i guess once you're happy with a pass you then assign yourself to that layer and then you use in that coordinate then for your next pass so it kind of is a process of refinement i suppose but they're pretty much all the same right they're they should all be on the same uh in the same position okay so let's talk about some of the other methods you have to incorporate in order to to make this work right so one of the difficult things once you're inside the camera is to know where the feet are right so if i jump back to it's a good example of this this this is here we go because you can't see the feet right so you're not sure now right now when you did your layout version of this right you you probably were um and when i did it i know i was i was i was going through this right now replacing the cursor drawing placing the cursor drawing on my when i was doing my rough like pathing layer right so so i know that he's he's fine right so when i'm in my clean up mode then i know that it's correct but if for instance you were doing this through the camera and you were creating a scene through the camera and you can't see the ground contact that can really mess with your brain then once once you actually like say you pop outside the camera look at it it's like things uh totally know where you expected them to be um because you need that kind of grounding to to understand where you are in 3d space so what i advise for that is that when you are doing your initial pass that you certainly do it in a more layout method as i demonstrated at the beginning where you're you're outside of the camera and then another way of keeping that consistent throughout and this is what i also did just to kind of check on because there were certain tricky shots where i wasn't quite sure where my feet placement were i would then just jump to like i have another view open might have a layout view ready to rock and then either you know in another tab or like have it to the side of your screen however you like to layer your different windows out right so this would be the camera mode here so i know this is what's going to look like through the camera and then my layout mode is showing me exactly then like you know where where that cursor where the the cursor and the canvas are in a more three-dimensional layout sense i think that's a good way of working anyway whenever you're doing anything in greece pencil in blender it's just to have that layout mode at your back and command kind of the majority of what you're going to be doing in this method of working is just drawing and positioning things by drawing and then amending them by drawing but let's say you want to tweak things in the way that you can in other modes like edit mode object mode stuff like that object mode don't do anything in object mode in this version right because what all will happen in object mode is if i move this it'll just move like the entire thing it'll just throw everything off right so you just don't touch object mode if you're going to use this the cursor method if you want to manipulate say the position of your character artwork or you want to do like edit mode type stuff then go into edit mode and that all works the same as it does on anything else yeah so you grab it in edit mode and you move it or you want to like stretch it or scale it you know all that's the same um and actually you kind of if you do want to manipulate things like manipulate the actual position of the artwork within 3d space if you if you're not happy with it or you just want to change it for whatever reason that has to be done in edit mode and so let's jump to like a layout view here now say i wanted to change so i'm looking at this now right i'm flipping through with my um my cursor thing and yeah i'm like i kind of wanted to move more through 3d space than that by this point or something then i would then highlight i like the vertices and then use my usual method of moving things i've the reason that's not grabbing eyes because the other layer is locked all right so if i want to move all these down i press a and then i can move the character in edit mode and that's and that's how you do that then right so it's not done in object mode like normally this was the kind of fight wasn't it was that you would have the object keys and then you'd have to move the object keys and then move the grease pencil so in this one there are no object keys okay so if you want to move your artwork in an object-y kind of way like an in 3d space then you have to grab it and edit move it i've got some ideas how to make this easier but basically yeah edit mode and cursor mode no object mode okay so what if you have multiple grease pencil objects you've done this way or you just have multiple grease pencil objects that you would like to use the cursor snapper on because it can be used on on any anything that has keyframes basically so i've duplicated the character here now and we currently snap to this one this guy here so when we flip through it'll flip to him so if i want to snap to this guy instead i just i'm in object mode i click the character i press assign and now we are snapped to that character and if i want to go say you know run the oh it doesn't matter is it rough i'm on the rough layer snap into that and then i go on this guy and just press the sign and now i'm back to that one so say you had a bunch of characters that were interacting here and you really wanted to like tighten up a choreography but you had to kind of jump back and forth between them that's the way to do it it's nice and simple this works across as many objects as you want as well let's touch on in between in a little here so because the cursor method places the strokes within 3d space um there's obviously um a gap between those positions in the space so if you wanna in between two keys you've got like for these these two keys that are on screen here right so we've got this position uh and this the cursor is on that currently sorry can we jump to draw mode and then that goes to the end and you can see the next position i strongly advise using onion skin for uh in between in cursor mode okay so how you do it then is basically like so you just kind of flick back and forth and you can see where that is roughly in space right and then for the in between position then i would place my cursor say halfway between those and then i would draw my my in between position and then once he's there the cursor snapper will then jump to it whenever you want right as long as you you pretty much only have to make a single mark a single vertice for this to work which will come into play in a moment when i i show another fun way of kind of pathing things out but anyway yeah so this is how i would sort of uh suggest doing in-betweening uh because then you can see i pop out of the camera so outside of the camera then or with the camera race you can see that that looks pretty pretty good yeah they look as if they're on the right track um yeah so that's that let's jump to a slightly more awkward angle um when where we can't perhaps see the floor let's go to this one again right because this is a good example as we we used earlier so i can't see the feature um so making an in-between position between these two characters would be quite tricky so if i jump the cursor here um actually it's not it's not because he's running in a linear fashion here right you don't actually have to worry about moving the cursor if i move if i go between these two frames now if i go there right and i it doesn't matter i can literally just in between this like you would normally yeah in between that and it's fine because he's kind of running straight it's if a character is moving sort of um in and out and up and down and left and right and things like that because then it really matters where your grounding is okay here's a good example of one that um is perhaps a little bit trickier right so let me jump my cursor so that's another thing as well wherever you are even if you haven't selected the um you haven't snapped the cursor if you're wherever you are on the timeline if you press up and down it'll jump to that keyframe right so here now he is definitely doing a an arcing path so let me try and put one between these here okay so that's quite tricky right so you've got an actual a curve so i'll go between differently to make one between here so the keyframe i'm looking at is between this one and the blue one so i would need to make put the cursor there that looks like it's roughly between them right and then i would start to in between the position let's say something like that yeah on the cursor the canvas roughly looks right there that's what you have to do basically is you just you kind of just position the cursor between the two positions and then draw yeah in between using the onion skins let's talk about how we draw things in the air because the whole method behind the cursor snapper is that we place the cursor on the ground and then we draw on the canvas that is projected up from the ground so how does that work when we're in mid-air so yeah let's use this shot as a case study for that because he's in mid-air like quite a way in the middle here and he goes all the way across to jump out to that right so normally as i was saying once you're inside the camera you want to be in view mode because that means that the canvas is always going to be pointing at the screen everything's going to be nice and clean and flat and everything right but when you've got a situation like this perhaps a better way of doing it which is how i did this shot was to once i established like where he is here right so i did that just from you know coming off the previous scene i knew where he is in space right so there i like kind of i was still in i still have the cursor touching the uh the rock there and then what i did instead is i switched it to side view i think right that gave me like a straight canvas and you can um in the canvas settings you can of course in the canvas settings you can of course make the canvas enormous if you want to just be mindful that you're going to be check you might change your the scale of your squares then and that might throw off your your volume so just take a note of whatever size it is so you can use the canvas because it's essentially just going to go in a straight path like across the canvas because there's a there's an invisible wall here right when you've got a canvas and so that's what you're doing you don't actually then need to you know for each one of those um those keyframes i didn't have to make a new cursor point right i knew that if i just keep drawing it's just basically on this flat plane and it's going to be fine you know so as long as you set that up with that in mind it'll work all right so since the advert of 2.91 which now has the ability to interpolate um strokes in edit mode this actually gives us a really kind of interesting way of pathing through a scene i i've only recently discovered this because obviously it's a very new feature but this could really really work all right so instead of say as i was doing instead of how i was doing in the main demo which was to place this the cursor draw the character place the cursor draw the character what you can also do or you know if you so wish is you can just kind of so i'm on frame so mom frame run right all i have to do it doesn't really matter what kind of thing you're in here so 3d cursor view i'll put it on site just whatever right so make a dot then scroll across to let's do it let's do it in increments of like 50 right okay so i want my character to go here by 50. all right so just make a dot that's what we have to do no real investment here yet all right then i'm going to have him go let's say he's going to do a full circle dot then 150 i want to come up there 200 about there 250 up on top right so now if i use my 3d cursor snapper i assign to it right so it's assigned to the gp layer on the stroke i can now use my shortcut or my my buttons down here to snap through those positions now that's pretty cool in and of itself right so that actually is quite a nice way of you can imagine yourself pathing through an environment like that quite nicely without really investing too much and then you could you could even get your timings and stuff down before you've even drawn anything it's quite nice it's sort of the equivalent of how you might block out in object mode but without worry of using any object keyframes right but there's a new addition to this is insane right so [Music] okay now i'm going to jump into edit mode and if i hold my cursor i think anywhere between two keys if i now go to interpolate right at the top here and then i can choose the step so i'm gonna go for say five right step it on step around fives or something right and i press sequence oh my god now we have one you know we have in steps of five incremented between so now if i jump using my crease pencil look at it this is this literally came out i'm making the video and this came out about a week ago i think and it's just looking so you can see the distance it does if you don't interpolate it that's all you have to do is you just have to press the button into because it remembers it sequence i'm pretty sure there's probably a way where you can select all the keys and then and then press it but it doesn't seem to work for me so you can do that interplay sequence into blade sequence and then now we have a super super in between we and it's all still stacked and everything so awesome because yeah but that's pretty amazing right that i didn't anticipate this um it just kind of like the stars were lined on this one you know the the new feature in grease pencil absolutely complements the uh the add-on we've added in or vice versa through some further experimentation i found a even more fun way of patting out a path okay so i've got my um my grease pencil down here if i put the cursor on you can see that the uh there's the canvas right but i'm gonna try something different here now so i'm gonna switch it to surface mode and when you do make sure you drop this down a bit it's like next to nothing right because it means like it'll be slightly above the ground otherwise okay so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to take advantage of this really cool feature in blender where you can record and then press play on the timeline so time passes while you're doing other things all right so if i press play now and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to i'm just basically going to place dots on the timeline as i go along for where i want the character to go right so i'm going to press play three two one d d d all right leave it there doesn't look like much of a minute but if i switch this now back to cursor mode and because i am assigned to that layer i can now don't you love me when a plan comes together look at this i wasn't expecting this honestly this is all just through experimentation and then of course as i showed you earlier you could then interpolate sequence and then you could just go and fill a line if you wanted to then complete sequence if anyone knows of a way to do the interpolation across all keyframes please let me know in the comments because i'll be great time saver but this is a really fun way of working right like how quickly we've got a path right so then you can go in and obviously start we've got our coordinates now we've got our keys that we're going to snap to go back in uh either use center base or first i'll stick with center it's my favorite so then we'll do like okay so onesie dude he's gonna he's preparing to launch off here and a bit of an antique sorry about the lag again yeah oh give me two arms the next keyframe so what'll happen there is because the the point is on the floor it'll jump to the floor but remember like you know you if you switch uh if we switch onion skin on maybe we can see where he is so we know that we actually want him to jump up here so we just draw up here and we know that we're in the correct like relative to ground kind of thing anyway you get the idea right so if i pop back there now and you can see how quickly we can start laying this stuff in uh yeah i think this is a good method um yep it might not be one you always want to use but i think it's a it's definitely a method right and i think i'll be using this quite a bit i'd like to highlight a couple of drawbacks or things to avoid or be mindful of and highlight if a couple of things actually don't quite work correctly if we're using the cursor method so please bear in mind as well that the cursor method i'm an add-on that we're putting across here isn't meant to replace object mode it's not meant to replace the way it's designed to work it's meant to complement it so there are some scenes or sequences or moments that will definitely benefit from the cursor method but there are also other times where you'll just want to stick to object mode and there's other times where you'll probably even want to just stick a grease pencil in front of the camera and do it that way so we're by no means trying to like say object mode doesn't work of course it does i've done loads of videos about it and i'll continue to do loads of videos about it so one thing to bear in mind then with with object mode right if you've done something with the 3d cursor especially something as extensive as as this right where it goes right the way through the environment then you really don't want to be touching object mode after this unless you want to completely restage all of the action right because this is what happens if i grab the object like you would normally hear now with g you see it's not just that the whole thing moves right this is because the origin is way back at the beginning so that's what happens i mean it's great if you know you do have to do that it's kind of you know it's it's fun to see it like this you know if you wanted if you wanted to add like say you know an array of this and then you know you know you you could array this and then kind of or duplicate it just for fun you know this could be you know there's definitely um utility to doing doing that kind of thing but but anyway what i'm saying is if you move the object you move everything when using cursor mode because the origin doesn't move that does affect the way that some of the modifiers work on it right so modifiers and effects some modifiers like the noise modifier for instance works absolutely fine and if i can smash this up to like like the thick sorry thickness modifier is fine because the thickness modifier is um attached to the strokes right so it's directly to do with the strokes so that works fine um as does the noise modifier so that works fine so that this one's always over the top when you put it on just draw the position off a bit yeah so the noise modifier works great as well no problem is so anything that's to do with strokes or like the geometry of what you've done fine not gonna be a problem also things like tint tint works fine um as does hue saturation yeah all that works fine the thing that doesn't work and and but we're looking into it so the effects couple of the effects modifiers don't work as they're supposed to in this thing because they're kind of tied to the origin of the object right so when we have blur and motion blur and the rim effects modifiers those are all really seem to be related to the origin point um it doesn't mean you can't use them it just means they don't work as easily as intended i'll show you okay so if we add a blur modifier to this if i click use depth of field it does work it registers where the depth of field is in my camera so if i was to then i'll technically if i click yeah kind it kind of works so so that's uh with just the um if i click on dude a minute click that off a minute and then let's try you know like he should be super blurred here right this is because we're so far away from the object now this is an extreme case like this scene i've done here you know we're way way way away from the origin which is probably not something you're always going to do i did this whole thing as one grease pencil object to stress test you don't have to do that but let's let's pump this up to like 200 or 72 hours yeah see it starts to affect it there right so the kind of automated side of it like um you set a a blur point and then it just carries all the way through that that just doesn't work so if i actually flick through this now you'll see he's blurred and then at some point he's gonna stop being blurred yeah see he's kind of less blurred here and then now he's totally not blurred right because we've moved even further away from where that's but so what it means is if you if you want the the blur you can still have it but you have to manually keyframe it a bit more now you have to do that anyway with um motion blur if you want a fake motion blur you have to just key everything like i did in the sci-fi video there's something to keep in mind we're going to see if we can find a fix for it in the pro version but for now it's kind of a bit of a a weak spot so let's switch the blur off and then let's do the same with rim so we add a rim and doesn't really do anything at the beginning it does so if i change the position of the rim to how i want it to look which is probably like see that and then i scoot along see it's fine here fine fine see it starts drifting and it's still there again it's kind of like it's not too bad but by default in like object mode they would be way more consistent here so again it's just a case of if you want it you have to key in some some extra keys to make it work but anyway look it it's still there it still works you just have to if you if you're going to push your object this far away from the origin you just have to do an extra work with regards to keying some of these effects another thing that doesn't work correctly um so you just have to use an empty instead it's like a camera constraint so i've got my camera selected here and i'm going to add a camera constraint now as if i wanted to track to this object so i'll select the object you know click axis now you see the camera doesn't move with it that's because the object that i'm trying to isn't actually moving the origin is at the beginning so that doesn't work all right so tracking an object doesn't work so you'll have to add an empty into the scene and then just animate the empty parenting also doesn't work so if i parent this camera to the object control p parent nothing nothing happens because again it's not actually moving as an object so those things just don't work again we can use empties or we'll look into seeing if there's another way of making that work just wanted to make you aware of these current limitations that we're hoping to find solutions to anyway that's it for the full tutorial i really hope you enjoy the add-on and the tutorial and i can't wait to see what you come up with with it head has actually set up an online document which will link in the video description which highlights various features and tips and tricks set up a discord server for my youtube channel the link will be in my bio on my youtube channel and in the description of this video so feel free to come on over and you know tell us what you think and if there's any issues or anything we can try and address them there uh youtube's decent for comments but i think when you need to dig a little deeper discord is much better so come on over and there's only one thing left to do and that's [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Spitfire Storyboards

Views: 12,061

Keywords: blender, blendergreasepencil, greasepencil, grease, pencil, animation, animatic, storyboard, addon, free, stepped, cursor, 3dcursor, blendercommunity, spitfirestoryboards, edwhite3d, 2d3dhybrid, hybrid, 2d, 3d, 2danimation, 3danimation, polyfjord, turret, action, obstacle course, onesie, cute, fun

Id: bqOXGhiKCT8

Length: 45min 42sec (2742 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020