I’m trying to make a base file for storyboarding, my idea was a few objects (A GP object for drawing, and then 1-2 other objects for action/dialog text) that are parented to the camera. That way all storyboarding can be done in blender before I start working proper. I wanted a couple objects to handle all the storyboard text.
I’ve been in blender for a few years now, and I know that text objects can’t have their text keyframed, so I figured I would build some sort of string setup in Geo Nodes, where I could keyframe the text from panel to panel. Apparently strings can’t be keyframed either in the string node, or in the modifiers panel. A half hour of googling didn’t offer up any solutions, so I went for broke and tried to see if it was something I could do in the VSE as a last resort. No luck there, either. I’ve asked around a couple different reddits and discords and the solution that keeps being suggested to me is a whole new object for every single panel description/dialog. That would leave me stuck juggling hundreds of different text objects, the management of them would be more labor than the actual storyboarding work.
I feel like I must be misunderstanding something. Is there nothing in blender that can keyframe text? At all? I’m a huge blender evangelist, but the idea that it’s lacking functionality this basic is absolutely baffling. A couple years ago I heard so much praise about how Blender for storyboarding, but without something as basic as being able to write text for panel descriptions and dialogs I can’t even get started. I can’t be the first person in the last two decades to want to board in Blender, surely this is already a solved problem. Does anyone know something I don’t?
You want to simply comment on frames or really want ot make the text appear?
For the later you might simple copy a tex object for every new text and change the animatd it “appearance” accordingly…
I heard of :
…but never about using changing text objects with this (but i’m also not very much familiar with grease pencil, so i don’t know the possible text features of it; but for comments…).
And there is always a python solution (okay this might not work today…)
Ohh and of course Geometry nodes… (with switches compareing the frame nuber or drivers… but this may be too complex for a story text…) See also Docs-Blender Manual: GN → TextNodes …
So here’s a super sketchy example of what the board setup would look like. All I want to be able to do is select the text that’s on-screen, and then change what it says for the next panel. In After Effects or Animate, this would be as simple as setting the text’s keyframe on this frame, then making a new keyframe on another frame and changing the text. I can’t find absolutely anything in blender that will let me do that, either with in-world objects, geometry nodes, in the VSE or in the compositor. It’s starting to feel like it’s fundamentally impossible for Blender to be able to keyframe a string, but it’s such basic functionality in so many other softwares I feel like I must be misunderstanding the problem.
Here’s the best solution I’ve been able to come up with. I made a geometry nodes setup and I’ve been creating a new string for every single panel that needs text, then using an index switch to swap between them. This technically works, but it’s such an arcade method for something so simple.
You’re not the first person to recommend a python script, but to be blunt I’m just not a coder. I can’t make heads or tails of how the different scripts I’ve seen even work.
A big part of why I’m trying to crack this setup is because I’ve been trying to sell different colleagues of mine who work in 2D on how great Grease Pencil is for their projects. Being able to build an easy-to-use base file for storyboarding could save friends of mine literally thousands of dollars a year on storyboarding software, but if any given artist has to have a bunch of coding experience to write any text, then it’s just not practical at all.
Thank you for this, I’ve been trying to find an add-on at least, but all my searching gets drowned out by extensions for wiggling words back and forth, haha. It’s still buck wild to me that an add-on is even necessary, though.
Another idea I have is to have different texts for different cells in different collections then use Keyframe Collection or something similar to make it easy to keyframe the visibility of the collection. Keyframe Collection if free from the creators website.
Granted, but neither was Flash, After Effects, Photoshop, DaVinci or half a dozen different softwares that have dynamic text inputs. I just have a hard time believing that in 20 years of development, I’m the first person who’s ever had a use for this.
I have had to number shots on an animatic last year and I did not find an easy way either. I did it in the sequencer though, so I added one text strip for each shot. Obviously not very scalable. This is the kind of thing I’d be surprised the Blender Studio doesn’t have scripts for…
On the subject of keyframing strings, how would that work ? how would you modify strings, say in the graph editor ? the dopesheet ?
I’m definitely interested to learn how to do it in the VSE. That was one of the solutions I tried for, but I couldn’t find a way to key strings in the text strips.
Top of my head, the same way AE does it. Basically the text doesn’t really have a presence in the graph editor, but it’s keys are still represented in AE’s Dope Sheet/Timeline equivalent. I’d take some screenshots as an example, but I cancelled my Adobe Suite last year, which is why I find myself in this situation to begin with, haha.
Personally I think that’s reasonable… especially since I don’t see any other obvious way to change a string apart from creating many and swapping them out, which you did and confirmed that it was a chore. If you want this to happen, heads up that the development team is more likely to look at a feature proposal if it’s fully fleshed out, ie if the design questions are already solved. If you plan on making a mockup or something to that effect, remember that captures from other software can’t be shared publically (at least not on devtalk since it’s affiliated with the foundation), so you’d have to make an original design, even if it’s inspired by other software. Cheers,
Your note about having the design-end of things thought out is actually really helpful. I’ll give some thought to proposing this. I haven’t done that yet, and I still don’t have a great bead on where to go to do it, but it’ll be a while before I have the free time to put something together so I’m sure I can find out before then.
Thank you, and thank you to everyone else in this thread!
