Real Pencil addon

Add a 3D pen following your cursor. A nice touch for demos, tutorials or just for fun !

You can also record tablet movement with the mocap feature to create an animation.

In any blend, click Init pencil > start control and enjoy the full power of the virtual pen!


/!\ The addon doest not add any drawing feature. Aside the pen motion capture tool, it's purely cosmetic.

Complete demo video

3 product versions:

Full:

Contain everything:
+ The addon
+ Default pen
+ Model pack of 10+ customizable extra "pens", from classy to funny.
+ Blend setup with paper-like surfaces material to draw with the right mood.

Basic:

+ The addon
+ Default pen

Standalone Model pack:

Default pen
+ all extra pens
+ all paper models
If you're only interested in the 3D models.

Features

Once control is started, the 3D pen will follow the cursor and react to your tablet tilt inputs.

Note: Visible in viewport only since it's an object that is part of the Blender scene.

Complete Display settings

Using a mouse device, you can disable the tilt detection and set pen angle manually.

While clicking, the model will be in contact position, otherwise in away position

Away distance can be adjusted in settings. If you prefer permanent contact, set it to 0.

Roll is not detected, but you can set it manually.

Adjust the scale to your liking.

You're good to go!

Pen Mocap

Once the control is active, you can use pen motion capture in bottom sub-panel

After ticking the record button, start the scene playback. The movement will be recorded.
Tip: Since record is done during playback, make sure to set a long enough frame range first.

A "pen_rec" empty object will be created with the animation.

Once the animation exists, you can clear or create another take (a new anim datablock)

The append model on mocap button will put the currently selected pen as child of the pen_rec object (respecting current settings).

Automatic whiteboard animation

Make the pen follow the strokes without any prerecorded motion capture.

Just select the drawing and click "Add Build And Create Animation"!
After tweaking the newly created build modifier settings, click the button again to re-generate the animation.

Setup

Panel is located in Sidebar (N) > View > Real Pencil

Set in addon preferences if you're left or right-handed (Only affect pen initial rolls).
If pen tilt in wrong direction, invert tilt horizontally or vertically with dedicated checkbox in addon preferences.

Handcrafted 3d models

Models are made in real world scale.

As low-poly as possible for viewport performance (some have a subsurf at render only)

The materials are tuned to be as good-looking as possible in any viewport shading mode.

Note: Pen models are yours for any use, personal, commercial (except reselling).

Customizable

You can easily customize or add pen models.
Those are stored in a blend file within addon folder. In the preference, there is a button to open the containing folder.

The scanned list include collection prefixed with 3 digits, you will find instruction in the blend.

Limitations and known issues

- This tool was designed to work with a graphic tablet and grease pencil objects, specifically GPencil draw mode.
Other scenario are supported but might not always work properly. (eg: Mouse device click detection can sometimes fail in other modes than GPencil Draw mode)

- Running a modal disable the auto-save! Meaning, while the pen control is active, the blend file will not be able to auto-save.
Therefore, it's not recommended to work on important file while running controls (or doing manual save regularly).

- Viewport swap (changing workspace, maximizing area or getting back from maximized) with control enabled will cause an error. If that happen, you just need to click stop / start button again.

- Compatible with Blender version 2.9+, But before 3.5, some pen shaders are broken.

Tablet Troubleshoot

Hovering tablet pen makes the pen "jumpy"  (switch rapidly between pressed and hover position):

- if you don't need the hover position, just set the away distance to zero.

- Sometimes just restarting Blender fix it

- Default input detection is 'Automatic', try switching to 'Tablet' input (note: this will disable pressure detection support for mouse device)


If the pen tilt in the wrong direction

- Go to the addon preferences and check the mirror in horizontal or vertical axis and restart the Control modal

Tips

- Disable the Eevee viewport denoising to avoid smearing effects

- it's often best to draw from a camera perspective view (better Eevee shadows)

- The pencils materials are best lookin with an hdri:
In material or render shading mode, uncheck "world" and choose your prefered ambiance.

- To get good-looking artistic brushes, get the free brush pack made by Daniel Martinez Lara
You can automaticly download it with native "Grease Pencil Tools" addon:
- Activate Grease Pencil Tools addon
- with GPencil object in draw mode, go to Sidebar (N) > Tool > Brushes
- In the brush dropdown menu (right side of the brush icon) select "Download and install texture brush".

Find the right drawing tool, even virtually.