Stroke Edit Mode

Enter Stroke Edit Mode with the Mode select menu in the 3D Views header or toggle the Enable Editing in the Grease Pencil panel, or use D-Tab. In this mode, many common editing tools will operate on Grease Pencil stroke points instead.

These tools let you move and reshape grease pencil strokes after they have been drawn.

Open the Grease Pencil tab on the Tool Shelf. Look for the tools in the Edit Strokes panel shown here:

Edit panel with grease pencil strokes.

Selecting

Grease pencil strokes are formed from a series of connected vertex points. To make changes, first select points on the strokes that you want to edit. You can only select points on the active layer. The selected points are highlighted as in the image above.

Hint

Set the layer’s Stroke Thickness to 1 to make the points more visible.

Use the mouse to select the points, or one of the selection buttons in the panel as detailed in Basic Selection.

Various selection functions similar to those available when editing meshes can be used:

Select All	A
Border Select	B
Circle Select	C
Lasso Select	Ctrl-LMB
Select Linked	L, Ctrl-L
Select More	Ctrl-NumpadPlus
Select Less	Ctrl-NumpadMinus
Select Stroke	Alt-LMB

Editing

Header

Some tools can be access through the 3D View header. e.g. Copy/Paste.

Onion Skinning

Toggles Onion Skinning.

Selection Mask, Alpha

See Further Options.

Menu

Shrink/Flatten Alt-S

Adjust the pressure values of selected stroke points. This provides a way to modify the thickness of strokes by moving the mouse or the Wheel.

Delete All Active Frame D-X

Deletes all strokes in the active frame. It can be accessed using D-X (anywhere), as well as Shift-X (Edit Strokes Mode only) or the GPencil ‣ Delete menu. This makes it easier to quickly get rid of throwaway scribbles.

Move to Layer M

Can be used to move strokes between layers (including to a new layer).

Edit Strokes Panel

Reference

Mode: Edit Stroke Mode

Panel: Tool Shelf ‣ Grease Pencil ‣ Edit Strokes

Menu: GPencil

Copy Ctrl-C

Copies the selected Grease Pencil strokes (or actually, points and segments).

Paste Ctrl-V

Pastes the previously copied strokes.

Paste & Merge

Pastes the previously copied strokes and merge in active layer.

Delete X

Points

Delete the selected points, leaving a gap in the stroke.

Dissolve

Reconnect the ends so there is no gap in the stroke.

Strokes

Delete the entire stroke containing any selected points.

Frame

Delete a frame when doing Animating Sketches.

Duplicate Shift-D

Make a copy of the selected points at the same location. Use the mouse to Translate them into position. LMB places them at their new position. RMB cancels and removes the duplicates.

Toggle Cyclic

Close or open the selected stroke by adding an edge from the last to first point.

Bend Shift-W

Bends selected item between the 3D cursor and the mouse.

Mirror Ctrl-M

Mirrors selected strokes along one or more axises.

Shear Shift-Ctrl-Alt-S

Shears selected items along the horizontal screen axis.

To Sphere Shift-Alt-S

Move selected vertices outward in a spherical shape around the midpoint.

Arrange Strokes

Arranges the selection of strokes up/down in the drawing order of the active layer.

Bring Froward, Send Backward, Bring to Front, Send to Back

Move to Color

Sets the active color as the new color to all selected strokes.

Interpolate

Interpolate Ctrl-Alt-E

Interpolates grease pencil strokes between frames.

Sequence Shift-Ctrl-E

Interpolates full grease pencil strokes sequence between frames.

Interpolate All Layers

Checkbox to interpolates all layers, not only active.

Interpolate Selected Strokes

Checkbox to interpolates only the selected strokes in the original frame.

Join Strokes

Type

Join Ctrl-J

Joins selected strokes.

Join & Copy Shift-Ctrl-J

Joins selected strokes as a new stroke.

Leave Gaps

Leaves gaps between joined strokes instead of linking them.

Flip Direction

Flips the start and end of a stroke.

Show Directions

Displays stroke drawing direction with a bigger green dot of the start point and a smaller red dot for the end point.

Reproject Strokes

Reprojects the selected strokes from the current viewpoint to get all points on the same plane again. This can be useful to fix problem from accidental 3D cursor movement, or viewport changes.

Sculpt Strokes Panel

Reference

Mode: Edit Stroke Mode

Panel: Tool Shelf ‣ Grease Pencil ‣ Sculpt Strokes

Menu: GPencil ‣ Sculpt Strokes/Brushes

Hotkey: E-LMB

Several tools for editing Grease Pencil strokes are provided in the form of brushes which you can use to “paint” or “sculpt” the appearance of the strokes without having to keep doing a tedious select-tweak-select-tweak pattern of edits.

Hold E-LMB and drag to sculpt.

Brushes

The brushes currently implemented are:

Smooth

Allows you to selectively relax jitter/shake and bumpiness, to tidy up messy parts of your sketches.

Affect Pressure

Use this option to perform smoothing on stroke thickness values.

Thickness

The Thickness Brush can be used to increase (Add) or decrease (Subtract) the thickness of the parts of the stroke under the cursor.

Strength

Increase/decrease (Ctrl) the alpha value of the stroke, E.g. for creating fading effects.

Grab

Takes the stroke points which fall within the brush circle when the sculpting action begins, and allows you to translate this set of points.

Push

The Push Brush is very similar to the Grab brush, in that it also allows the user to translate stroke points. However, unlike the Grab Brush, the Push Brush is not restricted to operating only on the first set of points which were under the brush when the sculpt action was initiated. Instead, on each brush movement, the points currently under the brush get moved based on the amount the brush has moved since the last time it was evaluated.

Twist

Used to twist/rotate points around the cursor, creating a “swirling” effect. It is useful for applying low levels of distortion to stroke points. The Direction controls whether the points are rotated in a clockwise (CW) or anti-clockwise (CCW) direction.

Pinch/Inflate

Used to draw points away from the cursor, or towards it.

Pinch

Draw points towards the cursor.

Inflate

Push points away from the cursor.

Randomize

Randomizes the stoke attributes. e.g. with Position enabled it displaces the points randomly in screen space to create jittered/jagged lines.

Clone Brush

Used to paste the previously copied points (in the Copy/Paste buffer on the active layer), located at the point where you clicked.

Hold LMB and drag to position and adjust the pasted strokes. The strokes center follows the movements of the brush/cursor (“Stamp Mode”).

Use Falloff

When the Use Falloff option is enabled, instead of moving all the newly pasted strokes by the same amount, only the points that are currently under the cursor get affected. Thus, this in this mode of operation, the brush is closer to a Paste and Push operation instead (“Stamp and Smudge”).

Common Options

Radius Shift-F/Wheel

The size of the brush. Increase/decrease brush size with Shift-F when not sculpting or with Wheel while sculpting (i.e. with the pen tip down, or mouse button held).

Strength Ctrl-F/Shift-Wheel

The Strength off the brush, can be changed by the pressure of the stylus. (In/decrease see Radius).

Use Falloff

Enables a linear falloff to calculate the influence of the brush on a point. That is, a point closer to the midpoint of the brush (i.e. the point under the cursor) will get affected more than the ones at the edges.

Direction E-Ctrl-LMB

Radio button to invert the brush effect.

Affect

Enable sculpt for position, strength (alpha value) and thickness in Smooth and Randomize brush.

Further Options

Selection Mask

Used to restrict the brush to only operating on the selected points.

Alpha Ctrl-H

Alpha value of the visualization for selected vertices. The visibility can be toggled (hide/unhide) using Ctrl-H.