Hi,
I’ve been using Blender for a few years now and I’m not a beginner to Grease Pencil. I totally understand the concept of line thickness and gap closure. When I updated from 3.3 to 3.5 the fill tool became really difficult to use. When I take my same file back to 3.3 the fill tool works great. I know I must be missing something. What are the preferred settings for the fill tool for best results in 3.5? I’m totally stuck.
Cheers!
I am curious. Can you describe how it is different from 3.3? or provide an example file? I never had any problems with the fill bucket in the newer versions.
Hello Ogonek,
Thanks so much for your reply. The difference that I’m experiencing is that the fill tool works as expected in 3.3 and 3.4. In 3.5 and 3.6 when I click twice to fill the shape I get the error “Unable to fill unclosed areas.” I don’t know why this is happening. Here is an example file:
Truck2.blend (1.9 MB)
Hmmm. Ok, weird. I downloaded every blender version since 3.3 in order to recreate the error. But it behaves exactly the same in every version up to 4.0 alpha. If I set simplify and gap close to 0 it even fills the little white knobble in the front.
I only get the message (unable to fill bla bla) when clicking outside the truck. I reset to factory defaults, tried it with both tablet and mouse… (I once had a driver problem with my graphic tablet where it would transmit wrong coordinates but then it wouldn’t affect only the fill tool I guess.) All fine across all blenders here.
Could it be OS related? I am currently on linux but will test it on windows tomorrow but can’t test it on mac.
Ogonek, thank you so much for doing that testing! Yes, I am on a mac, specifically apple silicon (M1 2020). I dug an old windows laptop out of my garage and tested the file there. The fill tool worked as expected! So it seems that you are correct, it must be OS related. I really appreciate you taking the time to test the file on your computer. The information you provided was super helpful! Cheers!
Hey MrH, always happy to help. Well - Seems like you have to use your old laptop from now on 
But seriously. I’d like to know why this happens and whether it’s only your machine or a mac issue in general. Can other mac users confirm this?
Yeah, I’d like to know why this happens as well. For now I can use 3.4 but eventually I want to use the newer versions, especially if I make any tutorials.
I made a short video in case it helps to illustrate the problem I’m experiencing.
Did you create a bug report? Guess the dev focus is on GP3 right now, but this shouldn’t happen.
It looks like there is an open report right now…and there is a workaround in the meantime. With MacOS there are two options for your GPU: OpenGL and Metal. By default 3.6 is set to Metal. If you switch to OpenGL the fill tool works as expected.
@Ogonek, thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. I have never had to report a bug before and there is so much great information on projects.blender.org. I will go straight to source in the future when I run into issues!
I am using MacBook 2021 M1 pro, I set the GPU as Metal. I met the same problem on version 3.5. But if I join the strokes carefully and cut out any strokes that are outside of the area, the paint tool works.
@David_Ma thanks for the additional info! For now, I’m keeping my settings on Open GL. Hoping this issue gets resolved with Grease Pencil 3.0
I solved the problem (MAC M1 METAL Blender 4) by raising the “Precision” parameter of the Fill tool. So the fill tool becomes less sensitive too small gaps or overlapping strokes. Hope this helps!
Phil
