v0.6.0

New Features:

• The default option of the 2D working plane is changed to "Auto", allowing operators to be performed in any 2D plane without switching the mode manually.
  • Please notice that the operators themselves are still based on 2D algorithms. Therefore, please avoid selecting strokes belonging to different 2D planes as the input of a single operation, which may lead to inaccurate results.
• Normal Interpolation: The operator is largely modified with the following new options added. Please refer to the attached video for a quick demo.
  • Convert Normal to Depth: A new method to generate 3D meshes (the option "advanced solver") by using the SciPy's L-BFGS-B optimizer.
  • Multi-color Mesh: An option to use line colors for generated mesh. Gradient colors can be achieved in this way.
  • Assign Open Areas: An option to use a vertex group to indicate open areas of the input strokes.
  • Stop-motion Animation: A geometry node group to automatically show/hide the generated mesh according to the Grease Pencil keyframes.

Bug Fixes:

• Several issues during the transformation between 3D and 2D spaces.

v06demo.mp4

v0.5.2

New Features:

• Smart Fill
  • Fill material/vertex colors can now be used as hints.
  • The option to use the same materials from hint strokes to generate fills.
  • The option to place hints and fills in the same layer. In this case, one recommended way is to use boundary strokes as hints, so that they can be separated from newly generated strokes.
• Mesh Generation
  • The option to manually switch between the external triangle library and Blender's native method.
• General
  • The choice of the 2D working plane is no longer limited to three orthographic views. Depth of generated points will be calculated, and two new modes "View" and "Auto" are added. This feature may be unstable and is still being tested. It will be formally released in v0.6.

Bug Fixes:

• Mesh Generation
  • The face orientation data is wrong despite displayed correctly.
  • Name of UV data.

v0.5.1

Bug Fixes:

• Dependency issue of v0.5.0:
  • The last version introduced a critical dependency issue, stopping the add-on from initializing in some cases. If you get an error message mentioning scipy, please remove v0.5.0 and install this new version.
• General: The issue that the fill regions are not displayed correctly after some multi-frame operations.
• UI: The issue that the shortcut buttons cannot be disabled in some occasions.

New Features:

• UI: More options to customize the display of the shortcut buttons. Vertical layout and vertical offset are supported.
• Line Fitting: New option "Trim Ends" in the Draw mode to preserve the start/end positions of the stroke drawn.

v0.5.0

Although it comes with a new operator (Smart Fill), this version (v0.5.x) will mainly focus on improving the current features. I think it is the time to revisit the current design for better user experience. Several enhancements are also planned to be implemented on existing operators.

New Features:

• A new Draw mode operator "Smart Fill" that fills the line art according to some hint strokes with different colors. This concept is similar to the Colorize Mask tool in Krita. Please refer to the attached video for a better understanding of how it works.
• Line fitting operators have new options:
  • An option to use relative distance, i.e., the proportion of the stroke length for multi-line fitting, which is not affected by the size of the drawing.
  • An option to inherit point UV rotations from the original strokes. This option can be useful when the brush/material has textures.
  • An option to resample in the Draw mode to keep the point density unchanged after fitting.

Bug Fixes:

• Unnecessary memory consumption of line fitting operators.
• The problem that line fitting does not inherit the fill vertex color.
• The problem that some strokes are not removed when unchecking the "Keep Original" option of line fitting operators.

demo-smart-fill.mp4

v0.4.3

• The triangle package is now an optional dependency instead of a mandatory one.
  • This decision was made because triangle cannot be installed on MacOS with the M1/M2 chipset. See #18 for more details.
  • The sketch cleanup and line fit operators can be used without triangle. The output is expected to be the same.
  • The mesh generation operator can be used without triangle. However, some options of the "Delaunay Triangulation" mesh style will be invalid. The "Grid" mesh style is not affected.
  • Please refer to the wiki page for the latest requirements of the dependencies.

v0.4.2

New Features:

• A new operator to import Adobe Photoshop (.abr) and GIMP (.gbr) brushes.
• PSD rendering: multiple Grease Pencil objects now can be rendered in a single PSD file. Layers are organized in folders.

v0.4.1

New Features:

• New options for color image import: generating materials, saving/loading colors to/from a palette.
• A new operator to render a PSD file preserving the GPencil layer and blending structure.
  • Please notice that many PSD features (e.g., masks, compression) have not been supported yet, which may be implemented in the future.

Bug Fixes:

• Line art import now joins line segments in a more reasonable way.

v0.4.0

This version (0.4.x) will focus on improving the user experience and import/export functions. Please notice that it is a major update with files reorganized. It is recommended to remove the older version before installing the new one.

Beside, more documentation is being added to the Wiki.

New Features:

• UI Redesign

  • Add a workspace tool to offset a shape with mouse dragging in the Edit mode.
  • Move touchscreen shortcut buttons to the bottom of the 3D view with:
    • Two new buttons to (1) arrange selected strokes and (2) tilt the view by dragging.
    • Options to change the appearance or hide them.

• Mesh Generation

  • A group of predefined stylized shaders now come with the add-on.
  • The interpolation method can generate 3D structure instead of the normal map.
  • The interpolation method can generate mesh with holes, when the input strokes contain holdout materials.

• Image Import

  • Raster images with multiple colors can be converted to Grease Pencil strokes now.

Bug Fixes:

• The order of side panels is now fixed.
• Operators in the Draw mode is now compatible with the "Draw Strokes on Back" option.
• The issue that the line art import cannot use materials other than the first slot.

v0.3.4

New Features:

• New shortcut buttons to arrange strokes in Edit mode for better touchscreen control. (This is a temporary approach. The whole shortcut panel is scheduled to be redesigned in v0.4)
• "Pinch Together" operator has new functions to eliminate the gap between Line A's end point and Line B's intermediate point. At the same time, a contact shadow effect can be generated by thickening the contact points.
• "Taper Selected" operator has new functions to change the pressure/strength at turning points of a line.

Bug Fixes:

• The mesh generation error of the grid style in some builds of Blender 3.3

v0.3.3

I posted some long term plans for more features to be developed in the future. Please feel free to leave comments using either issues or discussion posts.

New Features:

• New options to keep point attributes (strength, pressure and vertex color) when fitting lines
• Besides Edit mode, line fitting functions can also be performed on the latest drawn stroke in the Draw mode by assigning a reference layer
• A new operator "Pinch Together" to eliminate the gap between strokes with their endpoints close to each other
• A new operator "Taper Selected" to quickly change the shape of the stroke from its ends

Bug Fixing:

• Issue that fitting a line with less than 4 points can lead to an error