Blender for 2d animation: How do I turn an image plane to a triangular mesh quickly.

Hey, guys
A couple of years ago I experimented with using Blender as a 2d animation tool, to animate my digital paintings. Here’s an example project to show you what I mean:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xzPnY

Nowadays, there is Spine 2d, which is a pretty powerful software that is used for exactly the same purposes. Here’s a demo of their process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twUz99ek5do&list=PLK4SvZr04wV6ThBo3V5FxAEf42puisVpQ

What I noticed is that most of Spine’s results are more than achieavable with Blender, once I figure out a process.

My first problem is however the following:

I’d like to be able to import an image plane into Blender. Then use the Knife tool to cut it’s silhouette. And finally turn the silhouette into an even triangular grid. Is this possible and how would you propose I achieve it?


You should check out Cut Out Animation Tools(CoA_Tools) addon. It works alongside a photoshop/GIMP plugin to do pretty much exactly what you’re talking about (Draw outline around area, fill with triangles, rig/animate).

Edit to ask: does anyone know a way to do the “triangle fill” that CoA_Tools uses without setting up that whole workflow? Filling an outline with tris would be useful in many other contexts besides this.