2.5D Grease Pencil creative integrated Workflows

Support Animation and Rigging
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Hello, folks!

I was a bit surprised not to have found a dedicated category for GP (Grease Pencil) in the forum.

So, I’ve decided to create this “2.5D” thread here, because in my understanding, the typical challenges of Rigging & Animation in CG artistic language are intimately related to what I’m looking for: some enlightment of 2.5D Workflows in Blender using GP, for Storytelling purposes, including 2.5D Animation. More specifically, and put in a simplified way: 2.5D Workflows in which there are 2D Characters integrated with 3D Scenerii. EDITED (important!!): The 2D Characters with GP I’m talking about, is mainly for 2D Traditional Animation Technique, not 2D Digital Animation/Cutout/Flash Technique.

Over the years, I’ve occasionally watched incredible videos showing insightful 2.5D solutions with GP in Blender for Animation projects. Even though I have a background in 2D and even Animation Drawing, I have this understanding that it is often very, very complicated, and so I have this suspicion that perhaps 2.5D is a quite “niche” thing, in which, proportionally, there are only a few small amount of artists which actually are able to develop, or adapt to, 2.5D Workflows (even more niched, if we consider solutions relying on Blender [indicating usually GP], and not other software --which I cannot even name, because GP is incredible, even though extremely challenging!].

I’m taking advantage of the changing momentum for me-- in which I’m favoring some ‘return wind’ to the traditional art of Drawing-- to see if this time I can finally ‘catch a train’ going in that direction of 2.5D.

Maybe you have experience with GP Animation or even some kind of “2.5D” Animation in Blender; I’d love to hear your point of view!
Or maybe, you don’t have direct project experience with GP 2.5D, but, just as myself, is also attracted to it, and has some sort of vision on how that might be a cool artistic orientation to foster; I’d also like to know your thoughts.
Other references are also welcomed for sure! just remember, artistic Workflows, are not simplistic copy-paste; I’m more interested in the conversation, pros & cons, artistic developments, than ‘magic formulas’ --of course, I’d be mind-blown IF they actually existed, for my case of 2.5D GP!

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Hi, two tips from an amateur animator: Keep in mind that a Blender scene even if you use flat images is still fully 3d, forget 2.5d . And try to learn by yourself, GP animation is hard to be taught, you will have to come up with your own workflows and tricks.

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Thank you for the observations! It’s always nice to have considerations from other artists using the same resources.

I believe my questions were a bit too broad for this section of the forum.:sweat_smile:

Yes, I get what you mean. The GP Content (over time or not) can be ‘split’ around the 3D World space in various ways, which can be beneficial, but at the same time, very confusing in the beginning. So, treating the GP just a regular “2D” stuff, would be a conceptual mistake or limitation of its potential, as you have suggested.

Coincidentally, I’ve being saying that, learning Grease Pencil in Blender’s UI, is already pretty difficult in itself. I’ve already got ‘training’ on this aspect of GP: Stroke Placement, Brushes, Stroke X Fill, Materials, Color Attributes & Palettes, Layers & Masks… But you are right: the GP Animation is also a challenge of its own (for different reasons; and, clearly, I’m not even including here challenges of 2D Traditional Animation technique or Animation Drawing, corresponding to a complete artistic field).

It’s not that there aren’t any insightful tutorials, demonstrations and presentations in the internet for 2D+3D integrated GP Animation; but that kind of content is currently very scarce as of yet unfortunately. Also, the Workflows can vary a lot; I’d say the kind of Workflow and solution for Animation I’m looking for, is, on one hand, a bit more conventional (predictible), and on another hand, lightweight and economical.
In this direction, the only technical problem regarding GP Animation which I’m aware of and needs to be learned urgently, is how to combine Keyframing Animation of the GP Data (Layers/Strokes) with the one of the Camera Object; I have no idea how this is done, in spite of the new Slotted Action feature. It’s like, GP (Data) is not an Action on its own, although it contains Keyframes? But it can be a Slot? :rofl: But then, it doesn’t seem to ‘connect’ to the Camera Channel, because Camera Object is not equivalent to GP Data. I know a lot about Skeletons, but here is a complete different scenario!
Beyond this small, yet fundamental technical issue to process, the only challenge that remains for production, is just unrusty and expand my Drawing and Animation Drawing skills including in the context of the digital medium with a graphic palette (which could be unbearable in certain contexts, but not this one, not for me, not this time).

It’s too early for me to think on making a Walkthrough/Guide on this very interesting subject. But at least I’m gonna share some goods.

Model Sheet Area (and very inspiring GP Animation Drawing)

Just ‘classical’ Noise Modifier trick:

Extremly insightful, but very difficult to grasp every artistic and technical aspect involved; yet, an essential presentation to be aware of:

I’ve learned most of GP Data manipulations (Strokes, Layers, Masks, etc.) thanks to MumuMundo’s free, full course on GP 2D Digital Animation Piggy the Pig (even if it was not my focus that kind of Animation technique, his highly dedicated demonstrations decomplicate Grease Pencil methods like no one can do!):
https://www.youtube.com/@MumuMundo

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About keyframes the Grease pencil ones are about interpolation, sculpting or stroke editing. They cannot be created in Object mode. I try not to add action keyframes to GP and do all the actions with an armature. Also I avoid moving the camera the slightest until I finish all the animation because moving the camera messes up the posing if you are not careful. And when you use bones set everything (view, constraints etc) to local coordinates, forget the global ones, you will understand why on the process.

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I wasn’t expecting, at all, to require an Armature Object for this GP Object + Camera Object Workflow. But maybe it’s the easiest way to Set Up a combined, integrated Action for the different fundamental features?

But it’s unclear for me the purpose of a Skeleton in this case, since there is no Skeleton Rig in this kind of 2D Animation; there is nothing to Rig actually (well, except perhaps for extra special things, and the Camera Object maybe, and I’m not sure the GP Object itself would require Rigging, and as for the 2D Character’s GP Data… since it’s being ‘resfreshed’ over the Keyframes --Insert Blank Keyframe for All Layers regularly-- these GP Data do not seem to be very Riggable).

Thanks again for the recommendations.

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If you need to have an animated camera combined with a more traditional frame by frame 2D animation, the simplest way I can think of is to just set up a plane that’s oriented and parented to the cam, and then parent the grease pencil object to that plane.
And in Draw Mode, make sure the stroke placement is set to Surface, so the grease pencil strokes will always be projected on top of this plane.
This way the animation will always match the camera view and movement.

Here’s a little demo file with that setup
GP_ParentedToCam.blend (173.2 KB)

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You already saw 3 different opinions about the workflow and there are hundreds more that is why you should try yourself to come up with the best for you. GP is very easy to be rigged but there are many things to watch for. In the below example i press R to rotate the left arm and i turn it back to the original pose at frame 20. But in between i rotated the camera view just a little so the view plane changed and R button twists the arm and it is not coplanar with the rest of the body anymore. Imagine doing that several times, you will have a useless armature on your hands. Also try the lattice modifier, as you see in the same example it is a very powerful tool for deformations or facial expressions. And i avoid the fill drawing tool it is inperfect and adds many problems,i just draw with a Fill and Stroke material from the beginning.


manling.blend (552.3 KB)

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You can lock rotation on to just one axis, or press R followed by X,Y or Z to rotated just on one axis.

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Yes but the rotation on other axes is not actually zero, it changes under the hood so if you are using it in other drivers it will confuse things. Same if you move eg the bone with the G key, it will not move along the X axis as expected. You can duplicate the camera, look through the second one and if you are happy you copy the Camera action and use it on the main one at the end.
EDIT: Actually i am wrong and @Tedri_Mark is right, what i describe happens in limit rotation constraint and not in lock rotation, so yes you can lock the other two axes.