 Hero is the name of the OpenMovie project that focus on 2D animation workflow of bringing 2D into the 3D world of Blender. This is done by using a new version of what in Blender back in the days already was called Gris Pencil. So basically you can paint and draw and animate 2D in a 3D environment. This is nothing really new that the Blender is having right now. Actually the first Gris Pencil tests go back to the 247 release. 246 was the patch and then 247. So it was basically a tool for making annotations on your models or your animations or drawing arcs on top of your animation so you can share feedback for example. But even back in the days in this test from 246 which is ancient by today's standards was already being used for like basic animation tests like a bouncing ball. So over time this has evolved into having Gris Pencil tool has evolved into having a bit more features like colors and then background and onion skinning and then layers and then more and more and over time it stopped being a annotation tool to become more of an animation tool. So as of today 31st of July of 2018 is a very special moment because this annotation tool becomes a full 2D animation workflow that is part of Blender 2.8. A 3D, 2D into 3D and this is something that it's really going to I think it's going to change the industry because there is nothing like this in the market. There is really good 2D animation tools that have a bit of 3D and there is 3D tools that had a bit of 2D but none both in the same world. So behold 2D animation workflow also known as Gris Pencil. So what's the difference if you're already familiar with the Gris Pencil tools in the previous versions of Blender you will see that it's all very a bit familiar. But now there is a new object type that is called Gris Pencil. So when you press Shift A to add a new object such as any kind you can add a Gris Pencil object. And by default there is two primitives a blank which is an empty Gris Pencil object and a monkey which is a nice Susan that is in 2D. So it's a nice example of what you can do with the Gris Pencil objects. And also if you rotate the view you will see that you're actually drawing 2D in a 3D environment. These 2D objects have modes such as just like any other kinds of objects in your mesh. So like a mesh has sculpt and vertex paint. Well the Gris Pencil object has draw where you can actually draw, edit where you can edit the strokes, weight paint and sculpt. So you can even sculpt your strokes which is just crazy. So draw is where you're going to make new strokes where you are going to actually choose one of the tools with these nice icons that have it here. A pen, ink, even you can have the different kinds of strokes and that's where you create new ones. Then in edit mode is where you are going to actually access and select one of those, one of the strokes. So if I select everything, if I can move it with G, I can even use proportional editing to move my or even tools like to sphere, mirror and bend. This is still a work in progress. It's an alpha stage just like the rest of Lambda 2.8. But you can see already how powerful it is because you can just go and edit your own strokes like it was jelly. The same with the sculpt tools. For example, if you press sculpt mode, you can also have like smoothing or grab or pushing. So you can let's see the grab, which is similar to grabbing it in the other mode or smoothing for smoothing or changing the thickness. So if you want to make some parts more thick, you can just do it with your brush. So and also works the same as the rest of Lambda. You press control and then you do the opposite. So that way you can really have control over your strokes. The same with weight paint that you can use it with modifiers and everything that it's a real object. That's quite an upgrade before. Grif pencil was attached to the scene, to an object, to the view, but now this is an actual 3D object. You can shift D to duplicate. You can add modifiers. They also have modifiers, their own modifier types, which are instances for like an array. So you can have your own array of monkeys in this case. You also have a build, which is going to like it's the same as the mesh. Actually, it's going to draw your mesh as you draw it, because every stroke has like an index, like a time, like a life. So you're drawing this and I'm not going to go through all of the modifiers because that will come in a training series that will come to the blender channel and the blender cloud. There will be only about grif pencil and to the animation, but I just want you to have an idea of the power that this that this has. So you can have modifiers for color. You can have modifiers for changing your geometry for mirror. So that way, if you select, if you can draw half of your model and then you have a mirror on the other side. So it works the same as if it was a mesh and it works in 3D, of course, too. So you will feel very familiar with this concept if you're already familiar with the rest of blender. But there is a new concept that is only introduced for the grif pencil objects, which is the effects for now, only grif pencil for now. But actually, something that is pretty cool is effects that you can add is like to the effects that you add on top of your of your objects. So to illustrate this, I have a file from Daniel Martinez Lara, which is this one. And you can see here, it's a pretty nice animation. Actually, you can play it back. It's pretty neat. But in the modifier stack, you can enable the rim effect, which is a lighting effect, which is basically just like a like a mask with a color that you choose on its offset. But it has that rim lighting effect, which is pretty nice. And you can just toggle it like any modifiers. Yeah, they have orders. You can have a some flip modifiers, which is going to flip the geometry. So you can have it flip all of these buttons are animated. You can animate them. So you have so much here, like even pixelated. This is awesome. Can make pixel shaped. So you can make pixel art in 3D. What is this 2D, 3D, 3.5D. Anyway, so this is all part of the of this is made with 2.8 built into on top of 2.8. So it makes use of all of the 2.8 awesome stuff like a popover. So you can have popovers for like onion skinning of your mesh for making for drawing a canvas on top of your mesh, which I'm going to show here better in this little monkey. So, for example, if I enabled the canvas, it's like a 2D grid on top of your on top of your mesh that you can subdivide. And you can see when this object is selected, you can have multiple objects. But on the one that is selected, you can see the grid and to see where you are in this this object. So you can see exactly where you are. And with that also with animation. So animation is a key component of the Grisp pencil, you know, Grisp pencil is it's an 2D animation tool more than anything else. You can also draw. There is this nice example by Daniel Martinez Lara as well, where he's using the keyframes mainly just to to draw versions of a model. So, for example, he started making like this. Then he added a few variations, then another variation, and then it keeps tweaking it. So basically, it's like a process by adding keyframes, basically just add keyframes and then every frame will have will keep its own version of the of the drawing, which is fantastic. So Grisp pencil are now more than ever just another object within Blender. So they have modifiers, they have effects, which is very specific for it. But they also have a edit, like a mesh data, but Grisp pencil data context where you can split these to the object, which is actually in a 3D space. But it also has layers within it. So it has colors, you can enable disable the colors. In this case, you have lines. This is the example that I'm using for the monkey. So for this video, I'm only using the monkey so you can also replicate it at home. But you will see that it has layers just like a 2D animation software. The goal of Grisp pencil is that it feels very familiar for 2D animators that come from other softwares as well. But they have this little hint of Blender way of doing things. So if you make a new layer, you can start drawing immediately and then pass, which means piece in Spanish. You can have its own layer. The salt layer is going to have a tint color if you want one and it will tint the strokes. Then you can have onion skinning. So if you go to another frame and draw instead of D pass, you draw another one. And then you have these two keyframes and then the ones in between and after are just basically onion skinning, which you enable it and you should be able to see it as an overlay. So enable the overlay and you can see how was it in the previous frame or how is it in the one after. So this is more or less how you animate. But let's make the typical, delete the frames, one little ball, go a few frames more and then more and then more. Okay, the crappiest animation ever, but you get the idea. And with this, you can see the before and after of the onion skinning. I should show it actually in a better file, but you get the idea. You can change the custom colors. I'm not going to go through all of the settings because it's going to be a spoiler alert for the actual training that is coming. But yes, Gris Pencil is here and it's better than ever. It has a nice little icon. You will find it all over the place. You can have even, so for example, let's open one of the demo files that I got from Daniel Martinez Lata. It's very nice from my like. You can find it Gris Pencil all over the place. So for example, in the render, but maybe in the scene settings, you can simplify. And as you can simplify meshes, you can also simplify Gris Pencil stuff. So if it's a bit too heavy for your computer, you can disable, for example, lines of fields of your Gris Pencil object. So that way you see it a bit better or faster on your hardware. Because that is one thing that you need to mention is that this is, all of this works pretty well. It's basically EV. So you're going to need a slightly better graphics card, but the same as EV basically. Just that warning because even though it looks 2D, it still has a lot of processing for the filtering and for everything. So yes, if it goes well for you, then this will go perfect. But if it went really well in 2.7, then you might need an upgrade for this. But that, I mean, yeah, all this filtering, all this anime, yeah, it just takes a bit of compositing power. But it's the same as Blender 2.8. It's in alpha state. So it's going to keep being updated. Actually, this was added a few hours ago. It was implemented a few hours, March, a few hours ago, but it already has fixes all over the place. All the developers are contributing. Even I was changing some stuff in the interface, fixing tooltips, fixing here, things here and there. If you have any feedback about it, you can also provide it in the developers forum. And yes, this is huge. This is years of development, of actually being of not only development, but also like research and work. And this, as I said, this was implemented by Aligorit, by Joshua Long, many years ago, the very first version of, wow, July 19, 2008. So it's actually 10 years ago that it was added. So 10 years later, well, actually seven years or so, because three years, three, four years ago, the project was picked up as the artist, Daniel Martinez Lara. So the potential in this tool started making animation tests about it. And then over time it's done to find, like, okay, we could improve this thing and this thing. And then it kept evolving. The developers got excited and started working on it. Then Antonio Vasquez, currently the developer that was next to Daniel Martinez Lara and Matías Mendiola, another storyboard artist, is they were working together, like, every day and fixing things. And I think if you follow the development videos, you are probably familiar with it, but it's just an enormous amount of work than just out of passion for making this and giving the tools to the artists. So yes, expect a dedicated workspace in Blender 2.8 for doing 2D animation only. And remember, this is 2D, this is 3D as well. So you can just mix both. It's just the best of both worlds together. This works with EV. So you want to have EV or you want to have, like, I don't know, one of the crazy new madcabs. Yes, you can, of course. It's 3D in 2D. And it's just, okay, I just press the close button. Yes. It's in alpha state. It's been worked on. The other thing that I wanted to mention before closing is that the hero open movie project that I mentioned here, this was done with a development version of Gris Pencil. So the files that you can find on the cloud for Hero are not currently, they're not going to open properly with this new version of Gris Pencil because it was done during the development. So hold on there and there will be files and blend samples that are going to be made specifically for working with the new Gris Pencil. You will find them on Blender Cloud. Some of them will be free access for everyone and some of them were exclusive for Blender Cloud subscribers because this open movie was made thanks to Blender Cloud subscribers. So yes, exciting, super exciting. This is, I think it's really going to be a change in the industry. We showed this at the Anisee during the Anisee animation festival just a few months ago and people were mind blown because we were showing hero stuff, like showing 2D animation with the stuff from, for example, we were showing a demo. It's just a quick thing, but it's just amazing. We had this demo and then a 2D doodle next to it because this is the same Blender engine. Like the same, you can have a 2D animation here on top of this 3D character. PBR meets 2D meets NPR plus the Google Summit of Code. Things that are coming for line PR. It's just, just crazy. Exciting times ahead. I will see you again after the hype. Please go, if you go test it. It's in Blender, be a little Blender Adort, download your version. And, yeah, you know the drill. Shift A at a monkey and just go nuts. I hope you share what you're doing. Just put it online. Just share it. Let's make the world know that there is a new 2D slash 3D slash all these in the market. I will see you again in the next video. Bye bye.