Storypencil - Grease Pencil add-on for Storyboarding

[@kenkioqqo]

I cannot overstate how much Blender has been a blessing to the 3D modeling and animation industry. I mean, all the amazing features I'm enjoying for FREE with Blender actually cost hundreds of thousands of $$ when it comes to proprietary software. And the Blender features are top-notch world-class quality, with which any skilled team can create a Disney or Dreamworks level movie.

[@dc37009]

The biggest feature I'd add, mic voiceover straight into the timeline ~voiceacting with the storyboards on the timeline !!! ~Awesome vid Thanks !

[@vendacious]

I like to do this in Davinci Resolve, because now you can just record a voice-over and it'll convert it to text and let you edit out parts of the text without having to cut clips. I think it might be Studio version only, though, unless you use it a lot, it's may not be worth it.

[@ChrisNeuhahnArt]

The biggest thing that is missing from this demo is retiming of shots. And believe me. I want to dump Storyboard Pro as soon as I can. The main thing that makes Storyboard pro useful in production is the ability to have all edits be ripple edits. Meaning if I retime a shot, whether internal drawings within that shot, or the length of the shot as a whole, it shifts all the timing after that. The more complex a board gets, the more keys and potentially objects that have to shift with that timing, it gets very cumbersome. I was forced to do my recent short (on my channel) in SBP to get the main thrust of the exploration done. It was just too messy to do in Blender, and I was hoping for a nearly 100% blender pipeline.

[@jlonni2J]

That's great ! It would be great to do a VS with toonboom story board pro. the essential functions in production are: - automatic renumbering of scenes and thumbnails. - reorganization of scenes in "contact sheet" mode - print to PDF directly - input of dialogues and action's notes

[@dc37009]

I agree and would add, mic voiceover straight into the timeline ~voiceacting with the storyboards on the timeline !!!

[@poopiecon1489]

@@dc37009 can storyboard pro do these ?

[@dc37009]

@@poopiecon1489 yes but its janky, you can add audio memos... Either way we need the real thing ! (Ton)

[@poopiecon1489]

@@dc37009 which is currently is able to do all of these things /?

[@dc37009]

@@poopiecon1489 Blender by far, it's being developed so fast you cant even keep up with new features ! for storyboard learn VSE, GREASE PENCIL, and there is a Sequencer plugin...Too Start !

[@dkeys86]

Blender 4.0 doesn't have the drop down menu in edit switch mode to have two syncronized windows. Where can I find it ?

[@ni-wo]

Same issue here

[@andycuccaro]

@@ni-wo @dkeys86 It's now on the Storypencil tab, inside the Edit Scenes panel there's a "switch menu" that let's you choose between "Switch" or "New Window" for editing scenes.

[@littlecoloreddots]

I don't know why this is not promoted more. This is such a phenomenally useful tool. Thank you so much!

[@slamotte]

Amazing add-on! The amount of hard work that you guys put into Blender is incredible. Thank you, I'll give it a shot.

[@samuelsantos]

Amazing. As a video editor and motion graphics artist I can see so many uses for this add-on beyond just storyboards.

[@giladharnik2499]

My brain is melting through my ears. Last year I made a short film, and the storyboard-animatic part was my most tedious and least favorite proccess. I NEED THIS! Thank you very much!

[@activemotionpictures]

Fantastic addon! So we can add the actor's voice over in the scene template, and it will be "new" using the template, propagating it to the correct keyframe timing on the VSE. Great!

[@MatiasMendiola]

Sure, you can set up the template scene according to your needs. Also you could have different templates scenes for different purpose

[@briansnider7391]

Thank you Blender community for this incredible tool!

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Great work, impressed that you got to submit a new add-on for the official repo!

[@Scio_]

This is so cool! I hope we can edit the duration of a shot scene after it's created as well, and have other scenes adjusted as a result!

[@ErikvanSchaaik]

The Video Sequencer lets you speed-up or slow-down shots, and of course you can edit them (trim them, move them around). So if you have a very complicated scene with a hundred GP-assests running around, just retime it all in the video sequencer.

[@vbs2d_Art]

if you have the answer, let me know, I also asked the same today. I want to add more frames, but once it's created it doesn't let you change it. :(

[@santosd6065]

The "open new window" option in my VSE edit is not available. Is it somewhere else?

[@briansnider7391]

This workflow is perfect - very well done!

[@sillyladtan]

Thank you so much for this addon! Just discovering it and it's been amazing, will really help to streamline things for me.

[@im_Dafox]

Amazing, Amazing addon, thank you so much for your work ! As someone who really wanted to blend 2d and 3d for quick storyboarding, this is simply perfect. Quick idea/feedback maybe : I think it would be cool to be able to stretch Scenes length in the VSE by dragging handles at the start/end as a "Time > Duration" alternative :]

[@OrFennSchuller]

Can you export the storyboard into a PDF?

[@bit-studios1]

Wow!!! This is outstanding!!! ❤️👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿🙌🏿

[@khalatelomara]

that's quite handy for VFX or Usual video editing , I really struggled to add annotation on my regular video specially after cutting it into clips

[@theartoframos]

Now with 4.2 released and messing with this over n over I finally got a handle on it. It makes more visual sense when you do new window as I always have 2 monitors now that I have pen displays. You have a full birds eye view of the entire thing and it works better for my kind of brain. tried to use with blender 4.3 beta but it is not updated to work there I was so looking forward to use the new grease pencil 3 with this but thank fully Im using STORYTOOLS with this back in 4.2 because SPArk Sequencer does NOT make any sense. Too programmy/ coder centric😖. So far so good.

[@pillantechvideo]

Wonderful news tools for us, Thanks for sharing and developing.!

[@tagore4d]

super helpful... I just love it. THanks for the video.

[@therealmilowerx]

what if there is no special pulldown menu button? I'm referring to around 4:30 I have no triangle submenu available.

[@arpenix2540]

More right click select ideas for blender should be implemented.

[@SecretGameStories]

Hello! It's really incredible! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time! Thank you guys so much! Keep up the good work! Merry Christmas!

[@warrenography]

wow, that looks so clean and useful! thanks team!

[@ERSMUSICARTSTUDIO]

I will absolutly use this add-on. it looks amazing!

[@LandofAnimation]

Hi! Thank you so much for this wonderful addition! I was really looking forward to it! You are changing the industry for the better!

[@alpacaubaray3483]

wanna ask everyone! in my blender 3.4 this 'Storypencil' not available. how make this addon showing or install in my blender 3.4?

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@theartoframos]

Wow this was quite difficult to wrap my head around but I got it even have my own template file with brushes and layers. @MatiasMendiola I have a very technical question for ya as I'm using this exclusively. I made a blend file right before this came out so I made my different scenes manually. I made my template story pencil file then appended the 3 scenes of the NON story pencil file in hopes that I can make 3 scenes and just change the scene in the 2D animation workspace, basically inserting them into my story pencil workspace and continue on from there. But it seems the linking of the Video editing strips and the 2d animation workspace source scenes are linked in a deeper level. Is there somewhere I can go to sever these links and reconnect them to my appended scenes. Hopefully I explained myself correctly.

[@ErickBlender]

This is next level and this should not stay as an addon, Blender should work like this, thanks a lot 🙏

[@MatiasMendiola]

Many actual features in Blender was born as Add-ons. Add-on allows to quickly develop new features more freely, it acts as a proof of concept before be included in the core code. Hope this happens with Storypencil :)

[@TripFontain]

I just downloaded Blender 3.4 and when I search for the StoryPencil addon it's not there...is anyone else experiencing this?

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@subaphonic]

Thanks a lot, just started using it on a project. Is there a way to change the background from white to black in the base scene ? Changing it via world shading doesn't seem to work. Thanks

[@SergeyBel]

Hi, thank you very much for the video. What addon do I need to see the drawings on strips in the video editing space like you have at 7:38

[@Thartarus]

Hello Matias, I can't find the storypencil add-on on the official blender 3.4 release, is it available yet ? I can't wait to use storypencil, it seems amazing, thank you so much !

[@SHIMO_ANIMATIONS]

Same, I can't find it either.

[@TableTennisRealm]

Same here, looks like they forgot to include it in 3.4 😂

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@张志杰-x3r]

3.4.1 This function is available

[@hackenshaw]

This workflow reminds me of my flash days. It makes a lot of sense. I like

[@judgeworks3687]

Will there be an option to export as a pdf storyboard (multiple storyboard panels on a page)? This is wonderful. Thankyou for your work and explanation of the add on.

[@MatiasMendiola]

yes, we have plans to include pdf export in a near future. It's already quite advanced

[@judgeworks3687]

@@MatiasMendiola amazing. THank you!

[@MultiKwolf]

For this u need to download 3.5 alpha.. Thank you sir for your work.. ur changing how this industry ...

[@CGAnimPipe]

This is amazing! It would be great to have it as core to Blender, as this sync'd scene to sequencer functionality would be so good for previz/layout teams working with multiple cameras on a single sequence.

[@slamotte]

my blender has storypencil as a missing script, is there any way to fix this?

[@zadayaz]

this is super cool! definitely gonna have to try this out for my next set of storyboards

[@blenderblender792]

It seems easy and intuitive. Can you add sound to synchronize the sequences? If I want to expand the duration of a scene, will it bump all the following ones?

[@MatiasMendiola]

Basically, you can do anything with scene strips like you can do with other strips in the VSE (cut, duplicate, split, etc.) For now, the add-on allow only to sync automatically the timeline cursor, if you make changes in the range of the source scene still you have to manually adjust the strips in the VSE with the usual operators (SHIFT+ALT+R, ALT+O, etc.)

[@blenderblender792]

@@MatiasMendiola so... no?

[@MatiasMendiola]

Not yet, I mean... ;)

[@vbs2d_Art]

damn... the plugin is amazing.. simple, clean, easy... but it turns useless if you need to edit your sequence duration...

[@meerkatblack]

Very very cool- was doing all this manually yesterday and found this today- great work guys

[@mixchief]

Absolutely astonishing...!!!!

[@brianroberts4700]

If you don't see "Setup Storyboard Session" under "Draw" make sure your add-on is checked and then restart your application.

[@robinsonanimation]

this is excellent! thank you so much for your work, I have a couple of questions, 1 can you modify the base scene so you always start with the same scene and materials (for example ink instead of pencil) 2 can you reuse a scene in the timeline? , for example I have a scene with a background of a room then I cut to a different area, then cut back to the first scene, would this 2 have to be separate scenes? or could I cut 1 single scene on VSE and select different frames on the strip?

[@MatiasMendiola]

1. Yes, you can use any scene as a template for new scene strips 2. yes, you can duplicate any scene strip and then duplicate the source scene within VSE with the Scene data-block selector Basically, you can do anything with scene strips like you can do with other strips in the VSE (cut, duplicate, split, etc.)

[@stefanguiton]

Excellent!

[@vbs2d_Art]

Nce addon!!! But. I have a question, how can I add more frames to a created scene? I can't edit once it's created, is there a way to do that? thank you guys for this!

[@andycuccaro]

It seems that changing the "Hold Offset Start" value updates the Scene strip to its current time length. Don't ask me why, but it works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@carlos_dp]

very clever implementation! 👏

[@Im_Ninooo]

I wonder if this could be used for 3D animation.. I know Blender Cloud has their own animation sequencer addon but it seems too complex.

[@MatiasMendiola]

Sure, you can use it for 2D, 3D or hybrid 2D-3D projects

[@PurplePath]

Thank you, this is awesome! One Idea, how about automatic adding several scenes? Writing just scene(or what ever want to), adjust amount of them -> press generate, and it makes and put them automatically in to timeline.

[@catafest]

I start today drawing with a grease pencil and this is a good video tutorial, I expected to see more about how to deal with grease pencil features.

[@grinsegold2719]

I imagine recording voice directly in storypencil. Didn't Francesco Siddi had an addon to record voice to the VSE?

[@marlonpacheco6678]

Great add on. I have 3.4 but I cannot see the add on under testing. When can I test it out? Thank you.

[@jmalmsten]

As someone who's always a little apprehensive when it comes to the workflow of grease pencil. It does look intriguing. Though I wonder if the new Blender Apps framework will be able to streamline this all further so we don't have to have all the mess of the 3D modeling distracting and confusing new users.

[@MatiasMendiola]

The coming Blender Apps could certainly help streamline the workflow to do just simple traditional storyboards but when a more complex storyboard-animatics is intended (Hybrid 2D-3D), we need the full power of Blender+Grease Pencil

[@jmalmsten]

@@MatiasMendiola Yeah, and as I understand it, that's the beauty of Blender Apps. That when you need the full 3D power you can open the same project files in the main app. Even go back and forth as needs arise and specialist designers and animators can have the app tailored to their vocabulary without being a hinderence to the main pipeline.

[@yash1152]

@@jmalmsten what's blender apps? can u share some background on it? or maybe share if there's some video about it?

[@jmalmsten]

@@yash1152 As I understand it, Blender Apps is a way you will be able to pick and choose features from the main Blender software and tailor a version that only has what you need for each task and package it as an app. The examples that the have shown are mainly stuff like an asset viewer and such. And with scripting you can go even further in customization. It's not in the main release yet. But they (the Blender devs) have been putting out videos these last few days since the big Blender Conference.

[@MoonManPictures]

Hey, first of all, great idea! One issue I found was that when you put a text clip or other elements above teh storyboard element the "Edit" wouldn't bring you to the animation tab.

[@michaelearnest]

excellent ! thanks for the explanation!

[@anuarnor]

storypencil currently not working for 4.3.

[@jeanclaudedelaronde]

In the Video Editing workspace, is it possible to annotate on a imported image sequence and to leave the annotate notes on specific frames when scrubbing? Everytime I scrub the timeline I can see my notes sticking on top of the display from beginning to end of the sequence. Thank you.

[@herobot1]

Thank you for the video! I have a quick question and if it's obvious, I apologize. But can you duplicate/copy a scene in the sequencer and have it not linked to each other? Thanks!

[@jam-etc]

hi there. I'm using 4.1, and the drop down arrow beside "edit" is not there, so I'm not able to open the current shot in a new window. How can I go about doing this, or at least enabling it? Thank you!

[@prabhuramselvan]

Thank you so much. This is awesome

[@hotsauce7124]

This is GREAT!

[@rawls101]

Just downloaded 3.4... the addon is not there! Checked under "Testing" like you suggested, as well as Official... nothing. Anyone else have this missing?!

[@MatiasMendiola]

Was a mistake during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@ValhallaForArtists]

This is so epic.

[@zypher9690]

How do we export them image sequence out into a folder for use in other programs?

[@ShapetrixEntertainment]

i am not finding this in the most recent version of blender 3.4? I have the Testing highlighted and when i search nothing comes up

[@ShapetrixEntertainment]

I found your add-on in version 3.5 alpha, but not in 3.4

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@ccisme5793]

Hello, I have a question at the seventh minute and twelfth second of your video🤓，There are thumbnails on the scene strip for preview，How did you do it？

[@eastsidejapan109]

is there an update to this in blender 3.6 i dont get the setup storyboard session under the draw menu? also tried in blender 4 and same thing

[@joyoflove]

This is awesome. Thank you so much.

[@alainrinoreader9609]

Interesting. I cannot get the Greasepencil Dopesheet Cursor to drive the Timeline Cursor : what are the settings ? (moving VSE Cursor correctly drives the Greasepencil Dopesheet Cursor when Timeline Synchronisation is checked)

[@MagicSwordFilms]

When I render through the VSE my frames look dimmed, but while rendering in the Grease Pencil mode after pressing edit then they look how i drew them, how can i fix this?

[@mlabash]

I've been having a problem with this. For some reason, the video sequencer doesn't correspond to the keyframes in the timeline. The video sequencer only creates fixed length scenes that don't seem to be editable. I could very certainly be missing something but wondering if anyone knows the fix for this. Thanks so much!

[@craigwieland4411]

love it!

[@tcheadriano]

I think it could be useful for working with 3D scenes as well. But once I put some 3D object in one scene it just don’t appear in the main video editing.

[@animaniac77]

so are those scenes saved as separate blender files or they are contained in one blender file?

[@gamingvo]

This sounds fantastic! I absolutely love the idea of this , but i do have a question if this also works with changing,moving cameras and such? I would love to add this into my workflow

[@lega_xyz]

Just wondering is it possible use this in a 3D viewport vs the 2D Animation. Amazing stuff definitely wil use it for my next project.

[@RodriguezAlban]

Hi, seems to be a pretty nice option ... I just dowloaded Blender 3.4...but I couldn't find it under the addon prefs tab... ?

[@beki864]

Was a mistake during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@Novia5555]

why did the view on sequncer is only black and white? although I have color on the grease pencil?

[@EloiHenriod]

Hi again and thanks a lot for this add-on it's very nice. I have a question: My animatic have dialogues, so I added the audio on the editing window but when I open the grease pencil scene I can't hear the sound anymore. Is there a way to fix this? Thank you.

[@KuruGDI]

I wonder what the performance of this will be in the VSE. Currently including a scene in the VSE wrecks the performance and the preview does no longer work (with a 2D scene with very basic lighting that EEVEE can do in realtime with ~30 fps). It will be interesting if they improve on that.

[@sure5871]

HELP! I been having this problem for the whole night: when I duplicate my first shot in VSE and make modification to my duplicate, the original shot is modified too. How do I unlink the two? Thank you in advance

[@grandemations]

👍👍👍 awesome 😎 thank you.

[@TheCedric3d]

It's awesome! Amazing job. How can you do to retime a shot after creation? If I want to change the end oof a shot in the VSE, the end frane is actually on hold from the old end. Is there a workaround? For now I just re import the scene from scratch, its a bit annoying...

[@meerkatblack]

did you find an answer to this? having the same issue- working around it by rendering the scene and importing it automatically, but it would be great to know the fix.

[@andycuccaro]

@@meerkatblackIt seems that changing the "Hold Offset Start" value updates the Scene strip to its current time length. Don't ask me why, but it works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@jerartist127]

thanks for the tutorial its time for me to try this out lol

[@LFDLittlefluffydino]

This feels like an animation studio made this

[@blendercomp]

Awesome! :)

[@JacobHalton]

This looks like a very interesting tool, but I'm having a couple issues with it. Do you have a Discord where people chat about this and other grease pencil features? Some of my current issues are: When I move an object within the scene, it doesn't show the animation in the VSE view, only grease pencil keyframes. I'm also getting a bit of jittering when looking at it in the VSE view. One issue I'm having that might just be a bug, is when I have 2 windows open, scrubbing the timeline in the 2D animation window doesn't work. I can only jump to a specific frame, but not scrub the timeline. I can scrub within the VSE though. I've tried a couple other methods for storyboarding in Blender, and I actually really like the fact that there are multiple options that all work differently. I hope they can all coexist and it's just a matter of the board artist's preference for how they like to work, which method they use.

[@pamhampton2588]

I found you can use alt-r to refresh and then things will play as edited

[@padriandraws]

This is great! But I have an issue with setting up a storyboard session. On my custom 2D start up file it does not appear under the draw tab. I assumed that the option should be there if the addon is enabled and a Grease Pencil object is present? Or does this currently only work with factory setting of the 2D startup file?

[@pamhampton2588]

If addon is active, you'll find the set-up is there automatically.

[@brianroberts4700]

For those still looking for the answer to this question- when you're sure you have the add-on turned on restart your software. Mine showed up then.

[@azamburru]

Hello i see this is Blender 3.4 beta, I'm searching for the add on on Blender 3.4.0 but there is'nt can someone help me? thanks so much

[@WW_Studios]

Hmm... same problem here!

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@jeanclaudedelaronde]

Anyone knows where the (Open in New Window) option button is in Blender 4.2? Thanks for letting me know. Cheers. - Found it. It's in a dropdown menu ( Edit Scenes - Mode - New Window ) in the Storypencil side tab menu in next to the Sequencer (all the way to the right).

[@HelroyDelano]

Downloaded 3.4.1 and there is no Story pencil add on under testing.

[@beki864]

Was a mistake during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@WeatherWonders]

I've done little with the VSE and handling multiple shots, but I wonder if storyboarding would be smoother simply using one scene and the dope sheet.

[@nyagaga]

For everyone curious - they have left this feature out of the latest release. Absolutely no idea why, would chalk it up to being a mistake. Best thing to do is either use Blender 3.4 alpha for the meantime or attempt putting that version's Storypencil into the new release's addon folder. The latter I personally haven't tested though, so maybe just stick with the former until they address this.

[@MatiasMendiola]

By mistake Storypencil was not included during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@im_Dafox]

Thanks, just got 3.4 for this very addon and was kinda confused 😅 Also following Matias' comment - It is indeed in the 3.4.1 alpha release if anyone was wondering and you can copy it from 3.4.1a to 3.4 release :]

[@EloiHenriod]

Hi is it normal that I can't find the addon on 3.4 release?

[@beki864]

Was a mistake during the building of Blender 3.4 release version. Sorry for that, it should be fixed in 3.4.1 soon

[@kasali2739]

how to integrate 3d shapes into drawings?

[@mlabash]

Perhaps I understand something. Once the length of a scene is selected, it can't be edited after that. I'm sure that's something that's being worked on. Definitely a drawback.

[@ManjulaDasundepiction]

❤❤