Sketching in Blender

Blender can do 3D, it has a game engine, it can do video compositing and it has the ability to paint. But I’m not going to paint, I’m sketching in the UV/Image Editor.

The process:
1. Fire up Blender. (I’m running 2.59) [Update:I lied, it was 2.58a]
2. Change 3D View to UV/Image Editor. (Press Ctrl + Up to maximize window)

Optional:
Go to > Blender User Preference > Add-Ons > Paint and activate PAINT PALETTES

3. Press + Button, give it a name, set its size, press OK
4. In the IMAGE > activate Image Painting
5. Doodle/sketch/paint

My experience

I started with a black canvas. Very unusual color to start with. So I paint over everything with 25% grey (btw… Color is set when you start a new image).

Big brush always make strokes delay and slow update. Small brush will make the painting smoother. First of all the circle color picker isn’t helping much, colors are hard to pick. Thus I always use the Color Palettes. I was doodling and going no where with colors. Then I decided to paint up everything with 3 major values, black, 75% grey and 50% grey. Then a picture among the chaos started to form.

Paint Strength default at 0.7 that is like 100% opacity. To get to 10% opacity, you’ll guess that turning strength to 0.1 but that is not true. I have to go down to 0.02 to get similar effect such of GIMP’s. Pressure button isn’t helping either. So I just turn them OFF.

Blender only has very basic painting feature, so forget about painting/sketching in layers. Everything is on 1 layer, think “Paper”. You can set texture, but for sketching I just use the default round brush.

The rest of the process is simple… sketch like you sketch with MyPaint/GIMP.

Conclusion: Painting in Blender

Pros: Better than MS Paint, save in 32bit PNG with alpha
Cons: Big brush = slow, Pressure not working well, Difficult to color management, Opacity strength isn’t as suggested, Single layer, Not for big image.

About these ads