Editors

Generate modifiers (Grease Pencil)

Some of the modifiers are just available for specific object types.

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5.1

draft

Some of the modifiers are just available for specific object types.

Left grease pencil object, right a mesh object.

Array

The Array modifier creates an array of copies of the base object. Each copy can offset from the previous one in any of a number of possible ways. Vertices in adjacent copies can be merged if they are nearby, allowing smooth Subdivision Surface frameworks to be generated.

This modifier can be useful when combined with tillable meshes for quickly developing large scenes. It is also useful for creating complex repetitive shapes.

Multiple Array modifiers may be active for an object at the same time. This allows to create complex three-dimensional constructs.

Hint for Offset Calculation. The transformation applied from one copy to the next is calculated as the sum of the three different components (Relative, Constant and Object), each of which can be enabled/disabled independently of the others. This allows, for example, a relative offset of (1.0, 0.0, 0.0) and a constant offset of (0.1, 0.0, 0.0), giving an array of objects neatly spaced along the X axis with a constant 0.1 unit between them, whatever the original object’s size.

Property	What it changes
Count	Number of Items
Material Override	Index of the material used for generated strokes. A value of 0 uses the original material.

Relative Offset subpanel

Factor X/Y/Z

Adds a translation equal to the object’s bounding box size along each axis to the offset, multiplied by a scaling factor. X, Y and Z scaling factors can be specified.

Constant Offset subpanel

Distance X/Y/Z

Adds a constant translation component to the duplicate object’s offset. X, Y and Z constant components can be specified.

Object Offset subpanel

Adds a transformation taken from a chosen object relative to the current object to the offset.

Object

Choose an object.

Randomize

Randomize the transform values.

Property	What it changes
Offset	Randomize the offset values.
Rotation	Randomize the rotation values.
Scale	Randomize the scale values. · Uniform Scale: Use uniform scaling.
Seed	The random seed value.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Build

The Build modifier lets the strokes of the grease pencil object appear or disappear over time when you play the animation.

Mode

How many strokes are animated at the same time.

Sequential mode

Strokes appear or disappear one after the other.

Transition

How the strokes are animated. The items should be self explaining.

Timing

How to calculate the timing of the frames.

Natural Drawing Speed

Use recorded speed multiplied by a factor.

Property	What it changes
Speed Factor	Multiply recorded drawing speed by a factor.
Maximum Gap	The maximum gap between strokes in seconds.

Number of Frames

Set a fixed number of frames for all build animations.

Property	What it changes
Frames	Maximum number of frames that the build effect can run.
Delay	Number of frames to delay before the modifier has any effect.

Percentage Factor

Set a manual percentage to build.

Factor

How much the stroke is visible.

Object

Pick an object as the starting position.

Concurrent Mode

All strokes appear or disappear at once.

Transition

How the strokes are animated.

Property	What it changes
Grow	Grow over the animation time.
Shrink	Shrink over the animation time.
Vanish	Vanish over the animation time.

Timing

What method to use to build animations. Number of frames, or percentage.

Number of frames

Time Alignment

When strokes should start to appear or disappear.

Property	What it changes
Align Start	All strokes appears at the same time.
Align End	All strokes disappears at the same time.

Frames

Maximum number of frames that the build effect can run.

Delay

Number of frames after each GP keyframe before the modifier has any effect.

Percentage Factor

Time Alignment

When strokes should start to appear or disappear.

Property	What it changes
Align Start	All strokes appears at the same time.
Align End	All strokes disappears at the same time.

Factor

How much the stroke is visible.

Object

Pick an object as the starting position.

Additive

Builds only new strokes. Assumes additive painting.

Timing

What method to use to build animations.

Natural Drawing Speed

Property	What it changes
Speed Factor	Multiply the recording speed by a factor.
Maximum Gap	The maximum gap between strokes in seconds.

Number of frames

Time Alignment

When strokes should start to appear or disappear.

Property	What it changes
Align Start	All strokes appears at the same time.
Align End	All strokes disappears at the same time.

Frames

Maximum number of frames that the build effect can run.

Delay

Number of frames after each GP keyframe before the modifier has any effect.

Percentage Factor

Time Alignment

When strokes should start to appear or disappear.

Property	What it changes
Align Start	All strokes appears at the same time.
Align End	All strokes disappears at the same time.

Factor

How much the stroke is visible.

Property	What it changes
Start delay	Number of frames after each GP keyframe before the modifier has any effect.
Frames	Maximum number of frames that the build effect can run.
Object	Pick an object as the starting position.

Effective Range

Only modify strokes that lies in the specified time frame.

Property	What it changes
Start	The first frame of the range.
End	The last frame of the range.

Fading subpanel

Fade out strokes instead of cutting them off.

Property	What it changes
Factor	The factor for how much the stroke is fading out.
Thickness	How much strength fading applies on top of stroke thickness.
Opacity	How much strength fading applies on top of stroke opacity.
Weight Output	Limit the fade to a vertex group.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Dot Dash

Turns a grease pencil stroke into a dotted line.

Offset

The offset into each stroke before the dot creation starts.

Segment list

Manage the single segments of the dotted dash. Segments gets repeated as they appear in the list. Means when you just have one segment in the list, then this shape will be repeated. When you have two, then the first will be displayed, then the second, then the first, and so on. Every segment can have its own settings. Which are managed below.

Property	What it changes
Add Segment	Add a new dash segment.
Remove Segment	Remove the dash segment.
Move Dash Segment up or down	Moves the selected dash segment up or down in the list.

Search element

By clicking at the triangle button you reveal a search field with which you can search through the list.

Property	What it changes
Edit Box	Type in the search term and hit enter.
Invert	Inverts the search term.
Sort by name	Sorts the list alphabetically.
Reverse	Inverts the list.

Property	What it changes
Dash	The number of points (vertices) from the orignal stroke to include in this segment.
Gap	The number of points (vertices) skipped after this segment.
Radius	The radius of the segment. Maximum is 1 of the original stroke.
Opacity	The visibility of this segment.
Material Index	What material to use.
Cyclic	Enable cyclic on individual stroke dashes.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Envelope

Generates a envelope shape that connects all points in this envelope.

Mode

Property	What it changes
Deform	Deform the stoke to best match the envelope shape.
Segments	Add segments to create the envelope. Keep the original stroke.
Fills	Add Fill segments to create the envelope. This method does not keep the original stroke.

Property	What it changes
Spread Length	The number of points to skip to create straight segments.
Thickness	Thickness multiplier for the thickness of the new stroke.
Strength	Strength multiplier for the strength of the new stroke.
Material Index	The material index of the material that is used.
Skip Segments	Define a number of segments to skip to reduce the complexity.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Vertex Group	Assign a vertex group to modulate the deform. · Inverse Pass: Inverts the influence.

Length

The Length Modifier extends or shortens the original strokes length.

Mode

Defines the mode to use for the length calculation. Relative to the length of the grease pencil stroke, or absolute in geometry space.

Property	What it changes
Factor Start/End	Length difference for each stroke.
Used Length	What position of the stroke is used for the calculation of the extension.

Randomize subpanel

Randomization for the start / end lengths.

Property	What it changes
Step	Number of frames between randomization steps.
Offset Start	Size of random length added to the start of each stroke.
End	Size of random length added to the end of each stroke.
Noise Offset	Smoothly offset the random value of each stroke.
Seed	The random seed value.

Curvature subpanel

Follow the curvature of the stroke.

Property	What it changes
Point Density	Multiplied by Start/End for the total added point count.
Segment Influence	How much the length of the individual segments should influence the final computed curvature.
Filter Angle	Ignore points of the stroke that derivate from their neighbours by more than this angle.
Invert Curvature	Invert the curvature of the stroke's extension.

Influence

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Line Art

The Line Art modifier generates stylized line art from the scene or selected source collection or objects.

Note that due to lack of global cache at the moment, each Line Art modifier will run the entire occlusion calculation for itself. So if you have multiple line art modifiers to select different parts of the scene (to apply different styles, etc.), the evaluation will take much longer. There are plans to remedy this in the future, but this is a known limitation for now.

This modifier requires to have a ACTIVE camera in the scene, since the outline is created from this active camera. And the outline is created from exact this view of the camera. So better switch to camera view to check if the view fits.

The active camera has the active orange triangle above the widget. You can also see the active camera in the Scene properties.

Source Type

What type of geometry source should line art be generated from.

Collection

Property	What it changes
Collection	The collection where you want to apply the line art to. · Invert: Inverts the selection of collections.
Layer	Grease Pencil layer that is assigned to the generated strokes.
Material	Grease pencil material assigned to the generated strokes.
Line Radius	The thickness of the line.
Opacity	The opacity of the line.

Object

Property	What it changes
Object	The object where you want to apply the line art to.
Layer	Grease Pencil layer that is assigned to the generated strokes.
Material	Grease pencil material assigned to the generated strokes.
Line Radius	The thickness of the line.
Opacity	The opacity of the line.

Scene

Applies the line art grease pencil strokes to the whole scene.

Property	What it changes
Layer	Grease Pencil layer that is assigned to the generated strokes.
Material	Grease pencil material assigned to the generated strokes.
Line Radius	The thickness of the line.
Opacity	The opacity of the line.

Edge types subpanel

Which kind of edges to influence.

Create

Use Contour

Use a contour.

Silhouette Filtering

What kind of contour to use.

Property	What it changes
Use Crease	Generate strokes from crease edges. · Crease Threshold: Angles smaller than this value will be treaten as creases.
Crease	Influence crease edges. The angle what edges are treaten as creases can be adjusted in the edit box.
Material Borders	Generate strokes from borders between materials.
Intersections	Generate strokes from intersections.
Edge Marks	Generate strokes from edge marks.
Loose	Generate strokes from loose geometry.

Light Object

Property	What it changes
Light Contour	You need to pick a light object in the Light Reference panel. Generate light shadow separation lines from a referenced light object.
Cast Shadow	You need to pick a light object in the Light Reference panel. The line casts shadow.

Illumination filtering

You need to pick a light object in the Light Reference panel. How to thread the shadow region filtering. The names should be self explaining.

Options

Allow Overlaping Types

Allow an edge to have multiple overlapping types.

Light Reference subpanel

This panel allows you to add a light object as a source for line art.

Property	What it changes
Light Object	Pick the light source.
Shadow Camera Size	Represents the orthographic scale of an ortho camera. It calculates the area to cover.
Near	The near clip plane of the shadow camera.
Far	The far clip plane of the shadow camera.

Geometry Processing subpanel

Property	What it changes
Custom Camera	Allows to pick a different camera than the active scene camera for line art rendering.
Overlapping Edges as Contour	This option allows overlapping edges (e.g. from an edge split modifier or imported geometry where two edges occupy the exact same space) to be drawn as contour. Enabling this option will slow down the calculation slightly but it will handle edge overlapping cases without erroneous occlusion results.
Instanced Objects	This option enables particles and other instanced objects to be loaded for line art calculation. There will be performance impact when there are a large amount of instanced objects in the scene.
Clipping Boundaries	When enabled, line art will generate clipping lines as contour type at the place where near or far clipping planes cut the model. Otherwise there will be no lines.
Crease on Smooth	Allow crease edges to show inside smooth surfaces.
Crease on Sharp	Allow crease to show on sharp edges.
Force Back Face Culling	Remove all backfaces to speed up calculation.

Occlusion Subpanel

Property	What it changes
Range	If enabled, the modifier will select lines that have an occlusion level between start and end values. If not enabled just a single Level value slider shows.
Material Mask subpanel	Use material masks to filter out occluded strokes. You need to have a range level higher than 0. · Masks: Choose up to eight mask bits for the masking. · Exact match: Require matching all material masks instead of just one.

Intersection subpanel

Collection Masks

Choose up to eight mask bits for masking.

Exact match

Require matching all intersections instead of just one.

Face Mask Filtering subpanel

Filter Feature Lines using Freestlye Face Masks.

Property	What it changes
Invert	Invert face mask filtering.
Boundaries	Filter feature lines based on face mask boundaries.
Keep Contour	Preserve contour lines while filtering.

Chain

Property	What it changes
Intersection with Contour	Allows intersection lines to be chained together with contour lines.
All Lines	Enabling this option will cause all lines to have the type of contour and to be chained together.
Loose Edges	Allow loose edges to be chained together.
Loose As Contour	Loose edges will have contour type.
Preserve Details	Keep the zig-zag noise in initial chanining. · Geometry Space: Use Geometry distance for chaining instead of image space.
Image Threshold	Segments with an image distance smaller than this value will be chained together.
Smooth tolerance	Strength of smoothing applied on jagged chains.
Angle Splitting	The angle in screen space below which a stroke is split into two.

Vertex Weight Transfer subpanel

Property	What it changes
Filter Source	If source mesh has vertex groups whose name starts with this string, then the vertex weight info will be transferred into weight groups in Grease Pencil strokes. · Invert Vertex Group: Inverts the selection.
Match Output	Transfer the filtered object vertex weights into Grease Pencil weight groups with the same names as the filtered ones.
Target	If Match Output is off, then a target vertex group has to be specified. If there are multiple weight groups copied into target, then the highest weight value is copied into it.

Composition

Property	What it changes
Overscan	A margin to prevent an abrupt end of the stroke at the edge of the image. · Image boundary trimming: Trim all edges right at the boundary of image (including overscan region)
Depth Offset	Move strokes slightly towards the camera to avoid clipping. · Towards custom camera: Offset strokes towards selected camera instead of the active camera.

Bake subpanel

Property	What it changes
Bake Line Art / Bake All	Bakes Line Art strokes for active Grease Pencil object within the start, end frame range in scene. Bake All bakes all Grease Pencil objects that contains at least one Line Art modifier. After baking, baked Line Art modifier will be deactivated automatically.
Clear Baked Line Art / Clear All	Clears baked line art frames within the scene frame range for active Grease Pencil object. Clear All applies the same operation for all Grease Pencil objects that contains at least one Line Art modifier.

Mirror

The Mirror modifier for the Grease Pencil Object works in Object mode. It mirrors the object along its local X, Y and/or Z axes, across the Object Origin. It can also use another object as the mirror center, then use that object’s local axes instead of its own.

Object

Define an object to mirror at its origin instead of mirroring along the grease pencil origin.

You can animate it to move the mirror axis.

Influence

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Multiple Strokes

Adds multiple parallel copies of the stroke around the original stroke.

Property	What it changes
Duplicates	The number of additional strokes.
Distance	Distance between the original and the duplicate strokes.
Offset	Control the offset position (inner or outer) for duplicate strokes.

Fade

Fade out duplicate strokes, using their opacity or thickness.

Property	What it changes
Center	Control the initial position for the fading.
Thickness	Fade influence on strokes thickness.
Opacity	Fade influence on strokes opacity.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Outline

Draws an outline around the grease pencil stroke.

The active camera has the active orange triangle above the widget. You can also see the active camera in the Scene properties.

Property	What it changes
Thickness	The thickness of the outline.
Keep Shape	Try to keep global shape.
Subdivisions	Subdivisions of the outline grease pencil stroke.
Sample Length	The distance between the vertices.
Outline material	Material used for the outline strokes. If no material is chosen then the material from the parent stroke is used.
Target object	A target object to define the stroke start.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Simplify

The Simplify modifier allows you to reduce the amount of points in the strokes. It tries to reduce points while maintaining the lines shape.

Mode

How to reduce points in the strokes.

Property	What it changes
Fixed	Deletes alternated points in the strokes, except the start and end points.
Adaptive	Uses the RDP algorithm (Ramer-Douglas-Peucker algorithm) for points deletion. The algorithm try to obtain a similar line shape with fewer points.
Sample	Recreates the stroke geometry with a predefined length between points.
Merge	Simplifies the strokes by merging points that are closer than a specified distance to each other.
Iterations	Number of times to repeat the procedure.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	The material pass index. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

Subdivide

The Subdivide modifier subdivide the strokes by inserting points between other points to the lines.

Subdivision Type

Property	What it changes
Catmull-Clark	Subdivides and smooths the surfaces.
Simple	Only subdivides the surfaces, without any smoothing.

Subdivisions

Number of subdivisions.

Influence subpanel

Property	What it changes
Layer	Restricts the effect only to one layer or to any layers that share the same pass index. Click to pick the layer that you want to use. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Layer Pass	The layer pass index. · Use Layer pass: Use the layer pass. · Layer pass value: The layer pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Material Pass	Restricts the effect only to material that share the same material or pass index. Click to pick the material that you want to use. · Use Material pass: Use the Material pass. · Material pass value: The Material pass value. · Invert: Inverts the influence.
Pass	The material pass index. · Invert: Inverts the influence.

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