Table of Contents

Installation

Install from Disk

1. Edit > Preferences > Add-ons
2. Install from Disk > Locate the zip file you saved out

Extension

Currently not available but planned (as of Apr 2025)

Navigation

Whippet GP is an N (or side) panel add-on. It can be accessed via a 3D Viewport area and then pressing ‘N’ on the keyboard or clicking on the tiny arrow in the top right corner of the viewport.

UI

The add-on is broken into different sections so you can customize the layout of panels to your liking. Click on the dotted menu in the top right of each panel section and drag them up/down to reorder the panels.

Operator Buttons

Think of the operators as macro buttons, they help you do multiple Blender operations in one button. Without the ‘New’ keyframe button, you would need to scrub the playhead forward on the timeline manually then either draw or click a button within a drop down menu to insert new keyframes. Blender has a Quick Favorites Pop-up Menu option which is amazing but to really get into a drawing flow state, you want a simple keyboard shortcut to do all the lifting for you.

You have the ability to map the buttons to keyboard shortcuts to your liking or how I have them mapped (see keymapping below). Right click on a button and click ‘Add to Quick Favorites’ if you prefer to use the Quick Favorites Menu.

Outliner

A simple UI to help quickly select objects from your outliner. You can toggle the selection, viewport and render visibility.

GP Menus

Blender stores Grease Pencil menus in several different places so the key features you need are in the Whippet GP panels for quick of use.

• Layers menu with the new Group feature and buttons are available
• Brush Asset menu with some quick brush tool settings
• Materials menu to quickly select a material on the go

Keyframe Operators

Whippet GP comes with buttons that help manage keyframes on the timeline without having to scrub the timeline. Similar to how Storyboard Pro, you can insert a new drawing (or panel) with shortcuts. All buttons respect unlocked/locked layers, if a layer is locked, it will not create a keyframe for that layer when using the operators.

Button definitions:

• Animating on - slider or text input to set how many frames ahead your playhead jumps to create a keyframe.
• New - insert a new keyframe.
• Duplicate - duplicates the current keyframe.
• Number of Frames - select/type in the number of keyframes you want to add in bulk.
• Add Multiple - adds the # of Frames in keyframes to the timeline. If you type in 10 into the box, it will add 10 keyframes every x number of frames.
• Clear Layers - clears all Grease Pencil strokes/fills from the current keyframe
• Delete Frame - removes the current keyframe (for all unlocked layers)

Keyframe Flipping Options

The flipping options provide you ways to jump between drawings quickly and effectively. You can map the prev/next key frame buttons to ‘A’ and ‘F’ on your keyboard (see key mapping below) for fast flipping between keyframes. Note, locked layers are ignored in all circumstances.

• GP Keys Only: allows you to move between GP keyframes only and ignore object transform keys.
• Active Layer: lets you jump between keyframes only for the active layer. It will also ignore object transform keys.
• Loop Frames: will let you cycle back to the start of the frame range set on your timeline. This is helpful if you want to just loop through a specific action and you have not timed out the drawings yet.

Add Transform Keys (xform keys)

This will add object keyframes at all the highlighted grease pencil keyframes. It will not replace existing object keyframes if you highlight grease pencil keyframes that also have object keyframes. This feature can be used for quickly adding object keys to render stepped key animatics. See the Render Stepped toggle in Whippet Shots.

Keyboard Shortcut Maps

To help speed up your workflow using Whippet GP, you can bind the operators to keyboard shortcuts. Go to Edit > Preferences > Keymap to access the keyboard shortcut menus. From there you can locate a variety of keyboard shortcuts that rely on where your cursor is hovering over (areas).

Below are my keyboard shortcuts that help me insert keyframes and jump between them quickly.

Under Grease Pencil Paint Mode:

• whippetgp.add_new_keyframe - Shift+F
• whippetgp.delete_keyframes - Ctrl+D
• whippetgp.clear_layers - D
• whippetgp.duplicate_keyframe - Shift+D

Under the Frames section (you can just keep your cursor over the 3D Viewport where you are drawing and jump between keyframes)

• whippetgp.jump_to_next_keyframe - F
• whippetgp.jump_to_prev_keyframe - A

Under the Dopesheet section (in case you are editing keyframes in the Dopesheet and want to jump between them quickly)

• whippetgp.jump_to_next_keyframe - F
• whippetgp.jump_to_prev_keyframe - A

YouTube Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLU0ieTghnQ&t=20s&ab_channel=Maurits'Maurice'Valk