Yes I mean the operator in the right click context menu. You’ll need to download the build of the prototype that this thread is about This is not in main Blender yet.
D’oh, my mistake. I was digging around in the main build, haha. Apologies!
I’m all in favour of this proposal. A few thoughts:
It might be nice to add selection operators in Edit mode to select strokes/fills. I see that come in handy, for example when you have a mixed layer and want to split up the strokes and fills into separate layers.
The 3-button toggle (stroke/fill/both) and the 2-color selector (stroke/fill) are definitely an improvement.
I think the fill tool should have a ‘both’ option. Mainly because it was possible in previous versions to create a stroked fill. In essence this proposal is a change in data structure and we should thus aim for feature parity, like we did in with GPv3.
While maybe not used by the big guys, whoever uses stroked fills in their workflow, will be annoyed to have to switch to Edit mode every time to set the stroke attribute.
In terms of process: it would be good when the Python API for this change is ready well in time. Studios that use (in house) addons for coloring their drawings, should be able to adapt those before this change hits a release.
After playing around a bit, I find it definitely better, as it’s much easier to add and remove strokes and fills if the default materials didn’t have transparency in any field.
Furthermore, I think it opens up new possibilities in the future.
· Make it easier to use conventional shaders, even applicable to the rest of the curves.
· Filter lines and fills by layer.
I assume that in its current Blender state, when the material has absolute transparency, it doesn’t calculate the shape; that is, if I don’t see the fill, it doesn’t calculate it. If this weren’t the case, the fact that it’s explicit, as in the trial version, would be an optimization in itself.
This is actually one of the technical reasons for why I want to do this change. In the current state in Blender, we do calculate the fills even if they are not used. This is because materials can be stored at the object level and thus the object-data cannot know whether a stroke is filled or not. So most of the time we have to assume that any stroke could be filled.
Nevertheless, I don’t want to implement the proposal simply because of technical reasons. Yes there are technical reasons for why this would greatly help us to improve performance and other things. But since this does change a common workflow, I want to make sure that artists would want this newer workflow, e.g. that it actually is better and not worse. The technical reasons are secondary.
Retroactive change is the principle of animation.
Removed toggles are animatable in current official release.
Equivalent can be to use an Opacity modifier.
But in this case, Material is no more a pertinent way to precise strokes influenced by modifier.
Grouping of strokes per material was simplifying animation/stylisation through modifiers and locking of them to preserve from unwanted edition.
So, if I get it correctly, the idea is to switch this grouping per layer, now that Layer Groups are supported.
So, to move strokes to pertinent layer, at least, select operators are definitely needed.
Make Stroke/Fill/Both attribute a Select Similar option.
Most of time, for stylisation, desired selection is stroke/fill characteristic + material + layer.
I think that the change complicates the selection, compared to when stroke/fill characteristic is already part of material.
If stroke/fill characteristic is not forced by layer, modifiers restriction to layer and material becomes insufficient.
That implies that current modifiers are replaced by equivalent GN modifiers, handling the attribute, or that the characteristic is exposed in those modifiers and in Object Data properties for locking.
Looks cool, I just think weird in attribute color, when I change to bucket tool the color change too, looks like each tool has their own color, I dont like that. In any drawing software it doesnt work like that.
I’m using Geometry Nodes to generate Grease Pencil strokes in 4.3 and I gotta say that it would make a lot more sense to have this as an attribuite.