Blender is well known in 3D animation for all of its incredible capabilities. However, Grease Pencil objects have started to turn heads at 2D animation studios. Not only are Grease Pencil objects powerful in their own right, they're capable of taking advantage of a true 3D environment. And because it's in Blender, there's the additional benefits of being open source—particularly the lack of vendor lock-in.

The challenge has been in integrating Blender in the standard 2D animation workflow. There's no mechanism for getting 2D vector animation data from typical 2D animation software into or out of Blender. That's changing now thanks to Swiffle, an import/export add-on for Blender, focused on the SWF format (yes, SWF).

This talk will go into the reasons and benefits of choosing SWF for interchange and the challenge of supporting that format in Blender. Included in the talk will be a demonstration of the add-on in its current state along with a discussion of next steps for the add-on and Grease Pencil objects.