Blender has a couple additional Workspaces to choose from when adding a new Workspace: 2D Animation. General workspace to work with Grease Pencil. Similar to “2D Animation” but contains a larger canvas. Tools to create 2D masks for compositing. Motion Tracking. Tools to motion track and stabilize. In this tutorial, we will be looking at how to create 2D animations within blender 2.8 using the new stroke system. ⬇see more⬇Try Audible and Get Two Free Au. Yes, Blender is good for 2D animation with amazing drawing tools and a typical stroke-based workflow. Its grease pencil tool can be used to create beautiful cut-out animations and motion graphics. Blender can also help you to combine 2D and 3D animations together. The Process of 2D animation in Blender. Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. We provide daily news, art and tutorials. We provide daily news, art and tutorials. Follow BlenderNation Twitter Facebook Google+ Tumblr Pinterest+. Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.

Blender is one of the most amazing and highly recognized 3D animation package. Being free software, it offers amazing features that are only found with paid software. But, is it good for creating 2D animations as well? Let’s discuss it in this article.

But, before starting, I would like to suggest that you should watch ‘Hero‘. It is a grease pencil, 2D animated video created by the Blender team using Blender software only.

The video will give you a brief idea of whether this software is good for 2D animation to use in 2021 or not.

But, to answer your question in short, I would like to say that;

Yes, Blender is good for 2D animation with amazing drawing tools and a typical stroke-based workflow. Its grease pencil tool can be used to create beautiful cut-out animations and motion graphics. Blender can also help you to combine 2D and 3D animations together.

The Process of 2D animation in Blender

All parts of 2D animation including pre-production, production, and post-production can easily be handled by Blenders user-friendly features.

1. Pre-Production

The Pre-production step includes the creation of the story, script, and animations bases using the grease pencil. Grease pencil is the primary tool used in all the processes of 2D animation in Blender.

2. Production

In the Production step, the animators make sure to add proper line art, coloring, visual effects, and other finishing stuff. When it is done, we can use the blender’s rendering engine known as Cycles to observe the final result. Also, the real-time render engine known as EV can also be utilized here.

3. Post-Production

In this process, the final animation and editing tasks are there including color correction, video editing, zoom, audio, and music, etc.

To get proper results for any sort of 2D animation, an animator should take care to follow all these steps thoroughly. Also, to get the most out of this software, it is crucial to have enough knowledge of each tool.

Hey! I have written another article discussing “Is Blender Good for 3D animation or not?“

Features of Blender for 2D animation

As compared to the 3D animation, Blender is pretty easy to use for 2D animations. However, you should have good artistic skills to make the most out of it.

Easy to Use and Learn

I would say that’s learning to create 2D animations in Blender is not harder than editing videos or creating 3D animations.

But, along with the artistic skills, you should have technical skills too to create the desired 2D animations.

For now, there is a shortage of learning material in both online and offline spaces. However, you can research on YouTube videos and you will surely find some people to help you in learning through their free tutorials.

Grease Pencil Features

Grease Pencil is a revolutionary tool in Blender that is being used for different purposes including 2D animations. This tool is actually inspired by the actual real-world grease pencil.

Grease pencil is a quick and easy way for an art director to make notations and make changes on a 3D model or any other 2D scene.

This tool is excellent for creating story-board animation and combine 3D and 2D animation together.

Stroke’s can be organized into layers and shaded with materials and textures. Also, Grease pencil

Grease pencil has a special set of the viewport, real-time visual effects that can be applied to objects.

Why grease pencil is the main tool in Blender for 2D animation?

The typical process of mixing 2D and 3D animations involves preparing the scene in more software and the 2D one in another.

You have to export the images in a file format sequence from one to software and import them into the other software.

Blender Grease Pencil 2d

And if you need to make any change, you have to switch between the two programs you are working on.

But, Blender’s grease pencil allows you to draw directly in these 3D scenes. So everything stays in one place.

You can models, objects, houses, walls, furniture, and the rest of the environments you have and then draw over everything with the grease pencil.

This thing allows the animators to have immersive results as compared to Adobe Photoshop and other 2D animation programs.

Additional 3D tools for 2D animation

Blender Free Download For Pc

If you want to have the advantages of a 3D program, Blender can offer them to you. It becomes easy to make the animations much more beautiful when you have additional 3D tools for extra enhancements.

You will notice that various additional 3D tools for modeling, sculpting, and 3D animation disposal which will be very helpful for the workflow.

The animators can integrate 3D views to their works which that allows them to have excellent results.

Grease Pencil in VR

It is another innovative way to use the grease pencil in much more realistic manner. You can first start off with rough drawings. The, adding details will become easy for you.

This basically means, you can have a chance to create 2D animation inside a 3D environment. Isn’t is awesome?

Drawbacks of Blender for 2D animation

Blender is packed with immersive features that suits well for the all types of 2D animation works. But, there are some things that keeps this tool behind.

The main advanced of Blender is its steep learning curve. Because of the availability of lots of tools, it could become overwhelming for a beginner to start with. Along with this, no effective and extensive learning material is there because there are other industry leaders ruling the field of 2D animation.

Top Competitors of Blender

In the field of 2D animation, Blender competes with various industry pioneers. The main competitors of Blender are Opentoons, Adobe Animate, TVPaint, and Harmony.

But, when we compare it with the other tools, they might beat it in various aspect. But, we should keep a thing in mind that they are active in this field for a long time.

Even after that, Blender is free and continuously improving. Also, it has more room for improvement. The major thing that makes Blender unique and effective its ability to offer 3D-like working space for 2D animation.

I hope all these things have answered your question that whether Blender is good for 2D animation or not. Make sure to share this article with others too.

Also Read: Is Blender a Good Video Editing Software?