Speaker A
hi everyone this is pierrick from P2 design the Quest for 2D look in 3D animation has never been so popular I recently had the chance with my friend from atypic Studio to work on a concept trailer where we try to achieve
Pierrick Picaut shares five pro tips in Blender for achieving a 2D anime look in 3D: modeling and texturing, flat shading with line art, flat backgrounds, camera work, and animating on twos.
Key Takeaways
- Achieving a 2D look in 3D depends more on camera work, timing, and shading than on the models themselves.
- Flat shading, painted textures, and line art modifiers are core tools for a convincing toon style.
- Stepped animation on twos/threes and forced perspective replicate traditional 2D animation principles.
- Hand-drawn VFX and compositing effects complete the 2D illusion.
What the video covers
- Modeling and texturing: flat solid-color textures with painted line work and a simple toon shader (diffuse mixed with a shadow pass, normal map applied) instead of stylized PBR.
- Line art: Blender's Line Art modifier on a Grease Pencil object, with weight-based thickness falloff by camera distance and a custom profile to add organic randomness.
- Backgrounds: flat, hand-painted backgrounds animated in position and scale to match camera movement, using 3D models as a base painted over in Photoshop.
- Camera work is the main factor: the camera should not move in 3D space; zooms, pans, and shakes should be simulated through 2D scaling and compositing.
- Animation timing: animate on twos, threes, or fours with stepped interpolation rather than a pose every frame, using a step camera.
- Forced perspective: exaggerate depth by scaling character parts (e.g., a fist closer to the camera) to make poses more dynamic, as in traditional 2D art.
- Rigging with Rigify plus custom mechanisms; mixing fast-moving features between frames to mimic 2D motion.
- VFX and compositing: hand-drawn effects were used for the short, and compositing added blur, camera grain, and chromatic aberration to evoke older animated series.
- The creator promotes his P2 Design Academy courses and social media links.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and the Quest for a 2D Look
- 00:28Modeling, Texturing, and Shading
- 03:00Line Art with Blender's Line Art Modifier
- 03:36Flat Backgrounds and Painted Environments
- 03:55Camera Work and Its Limitations
- 04:56Animating on Twos, Threes, and Fours
- 06:02Forced Perspective and Posing
- 07:06VFX, Compositing, and Final Look
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
convincing Western anime style using blender to me there are five key components to achieve a good 2D look but before I reveal them I'd like to let you know that you can now find me on Blue Sky you will find the link in the
Speaker A
description below all right let's let's get started before anything move we got to achieve a good look it obviously goes through a good modeling and we can count on my friend Anthony for that is sculpted and model the two characters
Speaker A
for this short from the customers concept and you may already know his work as he also did kibali for my rigging coring blender the art of effective rigging second edition we Ed the low to meat poly R topology to make
Speaker A
them easier to rig and animate and bake the textures from the I poly model we generally make stylized PBR look like OverWatch involving the classic metallic roughness shading method but for this specific shot I asked him to paint
Speaker A
simple solid colors with a very very slight radiant from top to bottom no Shadows or light variations at all then we add did some Line work directly in the texture to Mark the main folds of the cloth and skin and added some
Speaker A
scratches to the blade the Shader I created for the two characters is super simple it's just the diffuse color mixed with a shadow pass to get sharp Shadows I used the normal map baked from the ey poly model plugged in a white diffuse
Speaker A
Shader converted it to RGB and multiply it on the base color then for each shot I will use a simple sun lamp and play with its orientation to get the best effect possible part of the line work was on the texture but we also used
Speaker A
blender line art modifier to generate it add a grease pencil object and give it a line art modifier then you have to Target the object or collection you want the line up to be generated from if your line out
Speaker A
thickness is not consistent depending on the distance of your character from the camera it might look 3D you can use weights to create a thickness fallof based on the target distance from any other object and in that case the
Speaker A
camera I also use the custom profile for the lineer to bring some Randomness in the thickness making it a little more organic and natural if you're enjoying this content so far please consider giving it a like dropping a nice comment and subscribing
Speaker A
if you want your shots to look 2D you want to get R of 3D depth and the best way is to use the same method used in Old School animated movies I used flat backgrounds and I would animate their
Speaker A
position and scale to match the framing or camera movement in most anime from the 8S backgrounds were made out of one painting sometime a couple painting at different speed to fake parallx but these are all to depainting I did use 3D
Speaker A
models created by Kevin F to create the base of the background but then I painted over it in Photoshop to get a more hand painted look I'm sure you've seen a lot of anime or animation that try to look 2D but definitely look 3D
Speaker A
most of the time the main problem is the camera work not the 3D models if you look at this shot the Run ring is not 2D like but it feels 2D you have again to think about the limitations from 2D
Speaker A
animated content the camera contr travel in space you can fake rotation of the camera with panning you can zoom in and out here I'm zooming in and out and there I'm just scaling up and down a static image there is no visual
Speaker A
difference in the end but as soon as I start changing the location of the camera it feels like 3D this is why on that short but also on the content I made for Nik or Rainbow 6 the camera
Speaker A
wasn't moving at all any camera shakes or reframing was made in composition on the flat 2D renders if you want to learn animation rigging and much more in blender discover my extensive courses on P2 design academy.com learn actual
Speaker A
professional techniques or enjoy all my exclusive free character RS only on P2 design academy.com if you're making animated content animation is key to define the style you probably all know that on a lot of anime while the frame
Speaker A
rate is generally 24 frames per seconds we almost never make 24 drawings for one second of Animation to save time and budget we generally create a new drawing every two three four frames and often enough even more this is what we call
Speaker A
animating on twos 3es fours Etc 3D allows you to fill the Gap with interpolations so if we wanted to look 2D we don't want to use those interpolations and we don't want to create a pose every frame we sometime
Speaker A
animate on once when the motion is very fast to keep track of it but whenever it's possible we may animate on two threes or fours this stepped style is very popular now since we're using a step camera if we want to force the
Speaker A
perspective it's better or easier to do it on the character forcing perspective is very common in any 2D art whether it's cartoons anime manga or Comics it's part of the exaggeration process that makes your art more appealing so I'm
Speaker A
basically sculpting the pose of my character to the camera as if I was drawing it if the fist is close to the camera I make it bigger I can also scale down the fit to exaggerate the depth and
Speaker A
get a more Dynamic pose by the way to save time on that production will rig the characters with rigify and some custom mechanism on top of it finally I love to use M to connect fast moving features from one frame to another
Speaker A
another benefit of animating to a static camera is that we can ret time the animation without having to sync the camera and characters EX exctly as if it's done in 2D animation you just draw the characters and this tells the
Speaker A
audience the position of the camera the focal length Etc VFX and compositing are also key component here you can take two path try to achieve a 2d look with 3D VFX and cool shaders and my buddies at Dyan goo Studio are to the best at it or
Speaker A
you can use handrawn VFX what better way to get a 2d look than 2D itself all the vs of the short were handdrawn which take quite a lot of time but I love the result also I had the chance to have my
Speaker A
friend Nicola finito working on the key V effects the dark Flames adding the cherry on the cake of that piece of Animation compositing I faked an older animated series look by adding a bit of blur a camera grain and some chromatic
Speaker A
aberration and this is how it was all done this is the end of this video and I hope you enjoyed it [Music]
Topics:Blender2D animationanime styletoon shadingline art3D animationcel shadingGrease Pencilanimating on twoscompositing
