The long-awaited update is designed to secure the future of Blender’s tools for 2D animation and frames, laying the foundation for the "next 10-plus years" of production use. The update improves performance, introduces new tools, and adds the ability to control the Grease Pencil using the Geometry Nodes system in Blender.
Grease Pencil 3, which was initially planned for Blender 4.0 last year, represents a complete overhaul of the toolset aimed at eliminating structural limitations and improving performance for large-scale projects. The original blog post from the Blender developers described it as laying "a solid foundation for the next 10-plus years." For those interested in the technical details, the video above features a session recording from last year’s Blender conference, offering an in-depth look at the software changes.
While the initial release focused mainly on aligning the updated toolset with Blender 4.2, it also introduces a number of significant new features. These include layer groups with color coding for easier management of large projects. The new "Gradient Fill" tool allows for filling areas with gradients by dragging a gradient from the start point to the endpoint, similar to most image editing applications. Additionally, drawing tools have been updated, including active smoothing for hand-drawn strokes.
However, perhaps the most significant change for artists is that Grease Pencil is now compatible with Geometry Nodes—the procedural modeling, scene composition, and simulation system of Blender. This allows for modifications to Grease Pencil objects using geometry nodes. Many of the existing nodes that work with curves have been updated to support Grease Pencil data. Converting Grease Pencil objects into editable curves is not entirely lossless, but it preserves all “common attributes and materials” and opens up new, interesting workflows.
The changes are not backward compatible—among other things, the Python API for Grease Pencil has been rewritten, and some features, such as drawing guides, have been deprecated. As Blender 4.3 is in beta, Grease Pencil is one of the key tools the Blender Foundation has specifically asked users to test for bugs. This process aims to identify and, hopefully, resolve key issues before the final release.
Grease Pencil 3 is available in the Blender 4.3 beta. The stable version is expected to be released in November 2024. Blender is compatible with Windows 8.1 and higher, macOS 11.2 and higher, and glibc 2.28 and higher on Linux.