7 Ways to Make Lineart in Blender 4.0!

In this video I walk you through 7 ways to create lineart in Blender, from simple techniques like Materials and Texture Painting, to more in depth methods like Grease Pencil and Freestyle!
Follow me on Twitter/X to see how I use lineart for my 3D models! / vertex_arcade
00:00 Intro
00:16 Inverted Hull Method
02:27 Materials
03:01 Vertex Colours
04:58 Texture Painting
06:03 Mesh Planes
07:14 Grease Pencil
10:53 Freestyle
16:00 Examples Combining Methods

[@jacobelgan5196]

Local man vandalizes Mario to make a few points

[@ByteBeamer-zs7hs]

So true

[@DeivaxGD]

Underrated comment

[@iamawatcher9201]

Nice video. My thoughts on the methods: - Inverted Hull is easy to set up but imo it doesn't look good and it's really easy to distinguish since everyone uses it - Material color I'm really not a fan of messing with the model, if avoidable - Vertex color I'm not too familiar with but it looks like it's good with details but not outlines - Texture paint mostly the same as vertex color but stored in a texture, so it'll be rasterized and needs higher texture size to look good - Mesh planes is more ideal since it's not tied to the model and you can easily animate it separately or hide it - Grease Pencil is alright. Downside is that it's camera locked in viewport and performance heavy, but you can bake it and manually fix stuff afterwards. - Freestyle has some useful options that GP doesn't, but not being able to see it until render is a massive downside imo

[@VertexArcade]

Exactly, those are the main benefits and downsides to the different methods!

[@marclapinff2709]

Which one to choose for friendly performances? Thanks 😊

[@VertexArcade]

They're all pretty efficient! The only one that slows down sometimes is the Grease Pencil depending on how many lines you have in your scene, but apart from that, all of the methods are about the same

[@iamawatcher9201]

@@marclapinff2709 None of them are particularly "performance heavy" but like Vertex Arcade said GP can be slow. If you're only using one active at a time it should be fine, but once you add GP to multiple different characters/objects it does start to slow down. I suggest setting up every GP object, adding them to a dedicated collection, and then disable it until you need them again.

[@aesya9357]

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@fungiboy]

How can I give this video a billion likes? This is insanely useful, thanks so much!

[@joeypouladi]

This Tutorial was so good. Before this I only ever did inverse hull but knew blender has implemented new ways to do outlines. This video cleared everything up perfectly. And loved the example images at the end. Great work and great tutorial 👍🔥

[@icedriver2207]

You can add a displacement modifier at a low level when using the Inverted Hull. This makes the lines a little more random and seem less computer generated.

[@cwgochris71]

If you had been around 10 years ago when I was trying to learn Cinema 4D's Sketch and Toon NPR feature, I feel like I would have been king of the world by now! :) As it is, this is the best NPR tutorial ever made, and now I feel like I can do exactly what I want with Blender! Thanks so much!

[@VertexArcade]

Thank you, appreciate it!

[@hammerheadcorvette4]

It's never too late. . .

[@VertexArcade]

Let me know what other videos you'd like to see! It can be anything from stylized NPR stuff to realism or even just workflow!

[@takapapatapaka5326]

Nice video ! I love how Freestyle with guiding lines creates little pentagrams on Mario's hand

[@tommasorenieri]

Not cheap but in my opinion the best way to control and obtain lineart in Blender in Psoft Pencil+ 4. Terrific add.on. Great video!

[@juansebastian6993]

Insanely useful tutorial. Amazing stuff!

[@starsnatcher4659]

thank you, this is so useful! specifying which ones work in other game engines and which ones were blender specific was exactly what i was looking for

[@glitch.........]

thanks this worked really well :D

[@dakota6431]

the texture method can be improved if you use a separate texture with the greater than node, and with that you don't need to have as high res of a texture, and I'm pretty sure in most cases you can recreate the shader in other game engines

[@VertexArcade]

Yeah true, although if the texture is already pixelated, the result will end up just looking like filtered pixel art, and sometimes you want the transparency of lines, the greater than method won't have any alpha element to the lines, it's either black or nothing

[@Koda.Fisher]

This was exactly what I needed! Very good and straightforward explanations for each method! Using mesh planes is prob my fave method, simple yet perfect for what I need to do! Thank you for this video! 👍

[@pn4960]

This is excellent and very useful ! You have a talent for tutorials

[@ineptznonz]

just a truly fantastic video, so direct and to the point while also being clear an easy to understand. Great work

[@ValuStudios]

Very USEFUL video. Thanks for sharing

[@bobsteven2363]

I’m assuming Grease pencil does work outside of blender since it was used in spider verse 2 pipeline. Although I believe they made a private tool to make the conversion

[@VertexArcade]

I watched a talk about it and it seemed like they imported a scene directly into Blender and then used the Grease Pencil. I'm sure they've made tools to export the grease pencil lines but it's not natively possible. You can convert Grease Pencil lines to a mesh, but that just gives you curves/vertices, you would then need to add thickness to those lines

[@fergadelics]

It’s a bcon23 video. Pipeline detour specifically for the line work

[@samg3456]

PIPELINE DETOUR BABEY!!!!!

[@richard29sher]

Thank you for this, it's just what I have been looking for!

[@AwkwardPain]

For sure saving this one for reference. Working out a 2d/3d workflow in blender and this will come in handy for sure!

[@slamotte]

Wonderful explanations

[@RichardSilvius]

This was super helpful - thank you!

[@someanimatordude2925]

You have wonderful tutorials. And exactly what I'm looking for

[@user-tk1jj1cp9x]

That was incredibly helpful. Cheers

[@angelavolkov1126]

Thanks, very quick and useful tutorial.

[@Anderdnm]

really good video!!! Thanks you so much ❤❤❤

[@ricks3754]

this video is very very useful, thank you so much

[@0pride809]

Mario look like he fell asleep at a frat party

[@tiagoandrade6466]

amazing!!!

[@penwrythe]

Thank you for this video so much!

[@JulliaSantanaSantos-zw6ge]

This is incredible! I would say that you changed my life with this tutorial. Thank u by this amazing content

[@nkanyisoinnocentkhwane3752]

😮this is the most comprehensive lineart video. I think the most I knew were 3 ways to do lineart before now

[@MelvilleG]

Thank you. A great video. One more way is using the compositor tab. You sample the pixel depth and compare it to the object's topology. Then regulate the contrast with the map range. Not the cleanest contours, but pretty cheap

[@kolupsy]

Just utilize pixel interpolation to make the hand painted texture solution just as clean and sharp as the vertex painting solution. It’ll be just as if not a lot cleaner. And texture resolution can be drastically reduced

[@tapikoBlends]

Love blender

[@heitorhiguchi1430]

awesome

[@Chuamidias]

Thankyou so much

[@Smuglu]

In the shader menu, Layer weight node with color ramp can also be quite nifty way of making outlines in certain situations.

[@VertexArcade]

Yeah in some cases, I just don't like using it because it entirely depends on the curvature of the model so sometimes it might look good, on more low poly meshes you wouldn't get good results

[@nimu_____]

Hello, thanks for the video, as far as I understood, to later use it in Unity or some game engine, the best option is The Inverted Hull Method? :o

[@SalamaAhmed-pj3jv]

I hope that Maxon can make something like the grease pencil in Cinema 4D soon. Blender is great; I would like to learn it, but you would feel that you have lost all your knowledge and that you need to start from the beginning, which is a very bad feeling.

[@XINN1X]

Is there a reason you like freestyle more than grease pencil with lineart modifier?

[@VertexArcade]

I just find that I have more control over the lines with Freestyle, and the ability to render the lines separately using Render passes is very helpful. I've been using Freestyle for longer so I'm just a bit more comfortable with how it works

Mesh planes!

[@the.......3694]

using 2 last method with particle systems will make the line penetrates the particles ,is there a way to fix that?

[@VVM2024]

this looks like the standees in Mario Wonder

[@freezybean3350]

What's the background music at 13:33?

[@stormycatmink]

Isn't there a geonode or something that lets you convert grease pencil to curves, and then to mesh, so you could export to other engines?

[@VertexArcade]

I'm sure there is somewhere, but you would also then need to bind that new grease pencil mesh to your rig and make sure that the weight painting looks good. So at some point you would need to Apply the Geometry Node modifier, which then loses the procedural nature of it

[@seikou1762]

Is there a way to make freestyle do a lineart respecting a material's alpha?

[@VertexArcade]

Yeah, under the Freestyle Alpha section you can tell it to also use Material, and then in the Freestyle Colour of your material you can set the colour and alpha and the Lines should be the correct colour and opacity. You won't be able to plug in a texture or anything, but you can set an overall Opacity for certain lines

[@RealityXHD]

6:22 what's that feature with different facial expressions?

[@VertexArcade]

That is my Shape Key Selector addon! It allows you to choose the shape keys of your character from a customisable visual menu, I have a video on the channel where I explain the method!

[@AshLordCurry]

Line Art or Linear T

[@luisysusmunecos]

in old editions of Blender there was an option where you just pressed a button and the lines were made automatically and you could instantly change the thickness and color of the line and it didn't affect the speed of the render, I don't understand why they eliminated it it's a tragedy, Now all of these options are a pain in the pan and time-consuming

[@VertexArcade]

That's Freestyle, it's still there it's just a bit hidden now, I go over it in the video!

[@hunterfivestars4601]

I hate the fact that non do what you quite want

[@shubhamvyas9459]

Render every time is enough reason to not using Freestyle.

[@voidglare8357]

For some reason its not working like every other tutorial

[@lollalofi3933]

it is most likely because of the blender update. some things i saw in the video blender doesn't have it right now. (or it is moved)

[@maxmasti3579]

i am crying ;-; wasted my life with maya ;-;

[@peterlaverty9397]

Really enjoy your tutorials, Good work. Are you Irish? I am from county Down :) Are you on instagram?