Slash - Add-on for Blender 2.8 onion skinning animation workflow

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Hi, all

Here is my new add-on to do onion skinning for your Blender animation workflow.

Onion skinning is a technique used by animators to see multiple frames at once. By using this technique, artists can easily see how to alter or adjust an image based on the previous image in the sequence. This technique is very useful for 3d animators to see previous animation frames or the later frames at once as well.

Slash is an add-on which aims to make using onion skinning technique easier for Blender users. It provides clean and easy-to-use user interface, and will make your animation skill to next level.

You can download the sample blend file in the video here:
slash_sample_demo.blend (1.7 MB)

This add-on is available on Gumroad and Blender Market

Slash

Slash

Features

• Let you see earlier frames, later frames at the same time

• Onion skinning for all frames
  

  

• Onion skinning for a range of frames
  

  

• Onion skinning on some specific frames which you add

• Onion skinning on multiply meshes at the same time

• Intuitive user interfaces, you don’t even learn to use this add-on, it tells what you can do with it.

How to install

Open Blender, go to File > User Preferences > Add-ons (or Edit > Preferences > Add-ons in 2.80), then press the “Install Add-on from File” button. Select the ZIP file that you downloaded after purchase and install it.

After installed, tick the add-on checkbox to enable it, and save your user preferences so it stays enabled.

How to use

• After install and active the add-on, you can see the Slash panel in the Slash tab of the Property Panel.
  

• Click the Active Slash Onion Skinning checkbox in the Slash panel. it will show you more UI.

• Select a mesh or some meshes you wish to do onion animation and click Add to add it to the onion set.

• Choose which types of frames you want to onion skinning: All Frames, Frames Range, Specific Frames.

• Click Start Onion to see onion skinning frames

• Adjust some settings and click Refresh Onion Objects to see the result.

• The Slash settings you made will be saved while you save your .blend file

• For more details, see the top video in this page.

Be sure to put your View display mode in solid mode to see opacity onion frames

Simple Descriptions of UI

• For all frames
  

  

• For frame range
  

  

• For specific frames
  

  

Bug reports

If you encounter bugs while using Slash on Blender 2.80, please report bugs in this thread, and I will fix them soon.

Blender version

Slash supports for Blender 2.80

Changelog

Version 0.0.6

• Show onion objects while animation playback in realtime
• Fix: Add-on crashes while active and deactive
• Some bug fixes
• Add an option to only preview onion objects for keyframes
  

Version 0.0.5

• Add an option to keep original onions and don’t apply custom colors and alpha

  See this demo video:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAwBTxPZcjE

• Fix: Onion object is not smooth

Version 0.0.4

• Move Slash settings into Slash category instead of Misc

Version 0.0.3

• Fix addon not work for the latest Blender 2.8 build due to the dependency graph API changes.

Version 0.0.2

• Add a checkbox option to move onion objects behind current object or not.
  Turning this on will prevent onion objects to overlap current object, turning this off can get a more precise location of onion objects. You can toggle this option which depends on your own need.

Version 0.0.1

• Initial release

About features request

Features request on Slash are all welcome, please post them in this thread.

Cheers.

[drgci]

This look like a ghost tool in blender 2.79
Anyway good job I will buy it as soon as possible

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Hi, drgci,

Thank you very much for your interesting.
Any suggestion is welcome, just let me know here.

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Just made a new version update, please see the Changelog above for more info

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Just updated to v0.0.3 to fix a bug for the latest Blender 2.8 build due to the dependency graph API changes.

See Changelog for more info.

If you got the error, please update Slash to version 0.0.3.

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Hey, just a minor update to v0.0.4.

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Updated to v0.0.5
Version 0.0.5

• Add an option to keep original onions and don’t apply custom colors and alphaSee this demo video:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAwBTxPZcjE
• Fix: Onion object is not smooth

[okuma_10 (Nikola Yordanov)]

nice! will get it once I get some funds…
one suggestion thought…since you can select specific frames to preview. Can you add an option to preview only the actual keyed frames, rather than every frame with some stepping?

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Thank you.

If I understand your suggestion right, yep, you can still only preview every keyed frames while you select Specific Frames option, there is no stepping in this type of option.

I hope I understand your suggestion right.

[okuma_10 (Nikola Yordanov)]

what I mean is to have an automatic “Specific Frames” option, that will preview your keyframes rather than every other frame.

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

I see now, there will be an option added to Specific Frames which just previews all keyframes.

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Update to v0.0.6:

Version 0.0.6

• Show onion objects while animation playback in realtime
• Fix: Add-on crashes while active and deactive
• Some bug fixes
• Add an option to only preview onion objects for keyframes
  

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Your suggestion is added to the new update. See Changelog for more details.

[Neri]

You may encounter bugs while using Slash on Blender 2.80 beta, because the 2.80 APIs are not stable yet, please report bugs in this thread, and I will fix them soon.

I have a very simple animation of two boxes parented to two rotating bones. I selected the boxes and clicked “Add”, and I do get the ghosts. Unfortunately they appear at some distance away from the boxes, not the same distance. One is shifted like -0.5 in X and -0.5 in Y. The other is shifted like 0.5 in X and -1.5 in Y. No Z shift, and the orientation is correct. I’m not sure if it is a bug, or am I doing something wrong (very fresh newbie in blender). Thanks!

[rkt (Aaron Elkins)]

Try to uncheck “Auomatically move onion objects behind” showed in below screenshot. And update your ghosts.