Hey there ! New to blender and animation and would like to work on some 2d animation and I’m trying to get some insight regarding system needs for animating short 5 min or less animations using grease pencil 2d. It wouldn’t be anything too nuts since I’m just one person.
The two machines I can use are a MacBook pro with pro chip and 36gb of ram
Or a Windows laptop with a mobile 8gb 4070 GPU a 8 core 7840hs CPU and 64gb of ram.
Hoping someone has some insight into which is sufficient
Thanks !
If the machine runs Blender properly, it should also be enough for GP and animations. Is there anything more specific you’re not sure about these machines? Or you want to choose between them?
One extra thing to consider is having fast and large storage, especially if you want to export the frames as images (exr) and do compositing on another software.
I work just fine in eevee with an i7 2600, 16GB of ram and an amd RX550 2 GB, which is a very old system. But rendering times are a bit long, one might need a Cuda enabled Nvidia, gtx 950 and up I think. I bought a 1050ti but it did not fit in my box. Grease pencil itself does not require many resources. So your specs are more than enough.
I have a 1tb t7 shield ssd from Samsung for storage aside from the hardware the machine. I just wanted an idea if either was strong enough. Is there a good tutorial for learning grease pencil for traditional 2d? My other question is how importing artwork from another program like clip studio into blender to work with grease pencil , what format etc.
Awesome ? Do you draw everything in blender or use something like krita or clip studio and import ?
I draw some tiled textures in gimp in rare occasions but all the characters in blender so I can use interpolation between strokes or rig them with an armature. If you trace imported image to grease pencil you have a mess in your hands. You can draw over reference images instead but always draw your strokes keeping in mind the next steps of your work flow or storyboard. And most tutorials for 2d animation suck.
Id love to see some of the stuff you’ve made. I’m still trying to wrap my head around working. Completely in blender without any of the brushes from the other programs like clip studio that I would typically use.
I am a complete amateur, i do small things from time to time, no portfolio but i think i know enough about Grease Pencil. Here is a simple example of rigging, no interpolation- single layer- drawn with fill material using color attribute. It goes without saying that you can message me with any question and i will answer when i get the time, since i work in a completely different field and my time is not much.
simpledeer.blend (659.7 KB)
That’s awesome ! I have to find some sort of tutorial for getting started since it seems pretty different than other dedicated 2d rigging software but the price tag of free sounds fantastic lol. The only downside I’m seeing is that it seems like it would be difficult to draw in an external program like clip studio paint ( so I have access to brushes) and then import it into grease pencil to rig and animate.
What you describe is cut-out animation but i would not go there. Create some textures and use them as the fill of your material but you will still get some unexpected results when animating, the texture will not always move the same way as the bone. Create your GP, add a stroke and a fill material, draw something. When you draw your strokes belong to a specific keyframe, your keyframe belongs to a specific layer. If you edit or sculpt on another frame a new keyframe is added since autokeyframing is by default on. When you draw on another frame a new keyframe is added to the selected layer and everything you had drawn dissapears until you go behind the new keyframe and visit the area of the previous one. So you have to understand how GP keyframes, materials, layers, vertex groups and modifiers work and it is frustrating because as i said there are no clear tutorials. I would make some but my English accent is terrible and i have no talent for teaching. I struggled 4-5 days to figure out how interpolation works. Also at some point you will have to add drivers which require some maths and programming skills. For a start draw and observe when a keyframe is added to your layer and interpolate sequence between keyframes based on the order of the strokes. You can arrange the strokes in edit mode, the top one in space is consider the last in the stroke order. As soon as I find the time I will try to create and upload an introduction video for blender 4.4
I don’t think it’s going to be a particular problem with the hardware specifications you’ve presented. 
Hardware requirements vary depending on the complexity or size of the scene.
Think about replacing hardware when work becomes difficult as you work larger than a certain size.
When working on 3D-oriented work, sometimes the user is inexperienced in using the blender and the scene is not optimized, which puts a burden on the hardware.
This is not a matter of hardware specifications.
I don’t know if 2D also has this problem. 
Ok i have a video for anyone starting with 2d (i start with an annotation as reference- i do not know if someone can understand the little things i do to get the head turn eg i do not mind the feather to flip but i have to redraw the nose). Also observe the problem of using external texture for the hat. Time offset is a modifier that lets you choose which frame to show and can be animated or driven. Sadly Blender crashes when i try to select all the interpolated strokes with multiframe in edit mode (i stopped at the moment i would assign the head to Bone002 respective Vertex Group). After one or two more parts i will share the project in case it proves useful.
One more video and the project but i noticed that in Blender 4.4 arranging strokes after rigging destroys the bone vertex groups. So i had to delete the buttons on the shirt for now. I did not use any lattice modifiers at the moment (eg for changing facial expressions). Sorry about the slow speed but after 50 years of age i started to rust a bit.
Your Windows or Macbook will handle Grease Pencil just fine - I’m running it smoothly on a GTX 1060 Ti with a Ryzen 5 4600H, so either of your setups will have more than enough power.
The drawing isn’t too bad lol. Another interpolation example if you prefer less clicks/work.
I added a lattice for the eyes (created new vertex group with the eyes only and attached the lattice to the head bone, used a shape key to blink the eyes) and i reupload the project. I will not go any farther with this example because it reached the point where more lattices and drivers are needed and it is getting advanced for new users.
test2.blend (1.3 MB)
Thanks so much for going through all the work to make these for me ! I guess a few questions before I decide to use grease pencil, what are the brush pack options like for the actual line art and color. You honestly can’t beat the power of blender for doing 2d though so I’d be a fool not t try it. There are a fair amount of tutorials if a bit older I could probably use to learn it. What are the render times like typically on small projects ? Probably a lot shorter than a full 3d project ?
That’s awesome to know I wasnt too worried but figured it could hurt to ask. Do you know of any good tutorials to check out?
Some other questions what are the render times like for your projects ?
Are you making small sequences a few seconds in length and then exporting them and compositing them together in another software to make a full shirt or whatever the final thing is?
Thanks for going through the trouble of making these for me. I suppose the only thing to think about for me is in regards to the line art quality possible in grease pencil vs something like clip studio with brush availability etc. I know worthikids is made in grease pencil so that’s a good example of what could be done.
I’ll just have to find some tutorials and I’m sure I’ll have hundreds of questions lol.
How crazy are your render times for projects ? I assume on my end it might be bit faster.