I’ve been switching between Blender and Illustrator/Figma for years, and I kept missing the way Blender lets you handle points. Tab into edit mode, shortcuts G/R/S or extrude with E. Vector tools always felt slow in comparison.
So I started building my own. It’s a 2D vector editor with a Figma-style canvas on one side and a node graph on the other. It now has an edit mode where you can tab in, select points and use the same shortcuts, including extrude.
Here’s a short Devlog showing the edit mode and a few other things:
I’d really like to hear from people who use Blender a lot — does this feel right, or am I missing something obvious about how the workflow should work?
I mean It would be nice if it did. It just seems like it has a few things that one could build on.
It has very basic vectors…
It just seems to me it would probably be possible to add more vector tools to Blender itself. I mean on the subject of switching Blender to vector editors. Maybe it would be possible to switch less. I don’t know. Is that a crazy idea?
Well, why? Why can’t this do it like illustrator? That’s an interesting question, I think.
I mean sure, you could! But its more than just Blender + vector-features. What about Layers, outline mode, crop mode, smart grids, masks, shape-builder tool, frames etc? Designers are used to these standard Figma/Illustrator things & thats my target group They should open up the Software and should feel right at home – even with no Blender knowledge. Adding Blender Edit-Mode Shortcuts is just a nice addon people can use on-top ^^
Well.. “Vector-tools” had developed in different directions in 2D and 3D because of the needs in each area. And as one “can see”.. there are different fondnesses even in one area..
Also blender as “mainly” polygonal mesh editing tool.. does not have that “specific” curve and surface tools..
Except maybe with (the new) Grease Pencil (still know when the Annotation Tool was called grease pencil… )
I think Blender could use some more tools for bezier curves similar to vector editors. Like for example shape-builder tool for 2d curves. That would be cool. I think it’s possible with Python even. I mean yeah, it would be quite a big task to do all the math, but maybe it’s not even needed since a lot of stuff exists already, like for example I was looking at beziers.py… Seems awesome. Sure it will not replace a vector editor, but I sometimes find myself more comfortable staying in Blender for some simple 2d stuff that would usually be done in Illustrator or Inkscape.
Blender has your standard Curve Objects and yeah, you can kinda draw them out with the Curve Pen tool or freehand with the Draw tool. You can also make use of Gpencil and use the import SVG as Gpencil.
I think the ability to do the expected point placement and pull the bezier handle at the same time is something that woudl be welcome in both Curve objects and in GPencil circles.
I feel like I started this discussion about using Blender for this. Just to clarify, when I mentioned Blender for vector drawing, I probably misspoke. I meant to say “why not use Blender as a start for developing something more”
It’s there for Grease Pencil and for curves already in the Pen Tool for Grease Pencil and Curve Pen tool for curves. The Grease pencil version of the tool is really weird though, I find it quite unusable because of how stuff snaps to the mouse position with way too large distance:
So awkward…
Also Blender doesn’t work with curves way worse than it may seam. I think not many people are even aware of the huge limitation in Blender - you cannot apply constructive modifiers to curves. So you cannot use Geometry Nodes and get bezier curves out of it.
Anyway…
Regarding the actual topic. I don’t know… The editor seems cool. But it’s probably a huge task to build such a thing from scratch and I think it’s really hard to compete with alternatives like Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma… It’s not a completely new idea to use nodes either, there is this new Graphite thing… I don’t know, it’s a really hard task. And if I am switching away from Blender, why should I use that one? It’s cool, but so are the others while the others are way more feature rich.
I hesitate to post this, as I don’t want to pull the discussion off the OP’s efforts. But, I think there’s some “reinventing of solution” going on, that perhaps both the OP and others may find of interest.
I’ve been using this addon for years, and it’s a far better experience than blender’s default tools.
Small update — I added a few more Blender-inspired things this week: a radial menu on right click (also works with Shift+A), bevel with B in edit mode, and F to connect two points. Plus a custom pen system where you can draw with any shape, SVG or image.
They should open up the Software and should feel right at home – even with no Blender knowledge. Adding Blender Edit-Mode Shortcuts is just a nice addon people can use on-top ^^
)
Just to clarify, when I mentioned Blender for vector drawing, I probably misspoke. I meant to say “why not use Blender as a start for developing something more”
