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Now that we understand how Blender 5.0 works and how we can leverage Scenes we can start to think about different workflows. Whether you want to create traditional 2D storyboards for live action productions, 2.5D story animatics for animated series or Previs, Blender allows you to do all those things and add-ons such as Whippet, can help facilitate those tasks faster.
Each tab below describes the different workflows we can utilize for a variety of productions. These are just high level overviews, I will show detailed steps later on via videos and other pages.
2D Storyboarding
In the Blender Studio’s demo of Blender 5.0 Story Tools update, we can see how they utilize Scene Strips and a simple 2D setup to create traditional storyboards. Blender’s Storyboarding Workspace comes with a Shot.000 Asset that contains one GP object and one Camera positioned so you can drawing in a flat perspective. Whenever you need a new ‘Shot’ (a Scene), you go down to the Sequencer > Select Add > Scene > Shot.000. This will create a duplicate Full Copy of that Scene (Shot.000) to be used as your new Shot.
This workflow is a great way to produce thumbnails, rough out ideas or for 2D shows with little 3D camera movement. The Scene Strips offer a clear way to preview shots in real time by switching the Storyboarding Scene for you. The default Blender way can be tedious and time consuming. So how can we do it faster with Whippet?
On the Getting Started page, we’ll learn how we can quickly setup multiple shots using the Whippet! button and leverage the other Scene Tools.
3D to 2D Software
A lot of productions require artists to take screenshots of 3D environments in Blender to then draw over them in a 2D program such as Storyboard Pro. This method is great for wanting to work in a preferred program and has it’s speed advantage when you’re not having to translate GP objects in 3D space. However, I do think there will be a push towards story artists being required to move GP objects or 3D characters around a set in the near future (it’s already happening on some shows!). Regardless, Whippet provides great export features to help this process be faster and more organized.
After you import your 3D environment, simply create the cameras you need to export and ensure you have object keyframes for each camera (or multiple keyframes if you’re doing a camera move). Once you’re finished adding the cameras, you can select all the keyframes you want to export then go to the Playblast, Scene Strip & Export Tools menu and select the Export Stills option. This will export PNG files of each of the keyframes for every camera. A folder will be created for each camera to help keep you organized with version and frame numbers in the filename.
Export References will export out two different images, one with all the 3D objects visible in the scene and another with objects removed that were tagged as Whippet Reference. This allows you to layer the images in your 2D software to reference the top one as scale and the bottom acting as a Clean Plate.
This method is great for 2D shows that do not require 3D camera moves but have environments built out in Blender already for story artists to use.
2D Over 3D
Instead of exporting images of our 3D environment into a 2D software, Whippet offers a way to setup a camera with GP object(s) placed in front of the camera to draw over the 3D environment. Think of it as placing a drawing card in front of the camera and then you draw as if the 3D environment is just a background layer. This method is essentially a way of cheating the location of characters and action happening in the environment.
Whippet’s 2D Storyboard Mode is how we can achieve this workflow. It allows us to setup our GP object(s) to a Set Location in relation to the camera and then each time we create a new camera, we’ll get a clean setup with the GP object(s) placed in front of that new camera. From here you can convert the cameras to Scene Strips or use the Playblast to VSE workflow to cut an animatic together. It’s totally up to you!
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Pro Tip: Draw a shadow to help ground your characters in 3D space when using the 2D Storyboard Mode
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NLE with Scene Strips
Blender 5.0 Story Tools uses Scene Strips to cut shots together through a Non-Linear Editing workflow. In one Scene, we can place multiple cameras to capture coverage of our story and then each camera can be bound to an individual Scene Strip. This allows us to have a camera for each scene strip, treating each strip as a “Shot” but instead of every Scene Strip being it’s own Scene, we have one Scene with multiple cameras.
Whippet helps speed up that workflow by converting your cameras into Scene Strips. If at any point you want to convert your Scene Strips to Playblast files to then cut video strips in the VSE, then you can use the Playblast Scene Strip(s) feature. This will playblast all the selected Scene Strips as mp4 video files and then import, time and cut those video strip files overtop of the Scene Strips. You can then duplicate the Edit Scene, remove the Scene Strips and then continue working using Playblast to VSE workflow to leverage the Take Versions and preparing for Editorial.
^ Convert Scene Strips to Video Strips
Playblast to VSE
Before the Blender 5.0 Story Tools update, we would playblast our camera footage and then cut together video strips in the Sequencer to create animatics. Whippet still supports this workflow with Blender 5.0+, while it may seem slower it still has it’s advantages.
The biggest advantage is using Take Versions for each camera. Each time you playblast a camera, a new version is saved out and can be referenced inside the VSE by RIGHT+CLICK on a video strip > Take Version.
The second advantage to using video strips instead of scene strips, is that we can export our animatic reels for editorial departments to ingest more efficiently. Whippet comes with an EDL export feature which can be used to import your video strips and cut together inside Da Vinci Resolve for example.
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