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Importing Quill files

This page details the supported features when importing Quill files into Blender using the addon.

Features are listed from the point of view of Quill.

The following key is used:

  • ✅: full support
  • ⚠️: partial support
  • ❌: not supported

Scene hierarchy

Quill files represent the scene as a hierarchy of layers, this hierarchy is imported as a hierarchy of Blender objects.

The following layer types are converted to Blender objects with matching data

  • Group layer
  • Paint layer
  • Camera layer

The following layer types are converted to Empty objects with no data

  • Viewpoint layer
  • Sound layer
  • Model layer
  • Picture layer

Common properties

Properties shared by all layer types

General properties

Feature Status
Name ✅
Visible ⚠️
Locked ❌
Collapsed ❌
Transform ✅
Pivot ❌

Visibility is imported but the inheritance of the parent group visibility is not respected at this point. This is because Blender objects don't natively support visibility inheritance (hiding the parent doesn't hide the children).

By default hidden layers are not imported. You can force their import by checking Include > Hidden layers in the import dialog. In this case hidden layer groups will be imported and forced visible.

Key frame animation data

Feature Status
Visibility key frames ⚠️
Transform key frames ✅
Offset key frames ❌
Opacity key frames ❌
Key frame interpolation ✅

Visibility key frames are not imported on layer groups.

Transform and transform keys are imported and inherited between the parent group and children.

Key frame interpolation (None, Linear, Ease in, Ease out, Ease in/out) is generally supported but may not be an exact mathematical match on the intermediate frames.

Quill paint layers

Paint layers contain one or more drawings made of paint strokes. On import the drawings are converted to either Mesh objects or Grease pencil objects, this can be configured in the import dialog.

Import as Mesh

The following features are supported when importing paint layers as Mesh

Feature Status
Ribbon brush ✅
Cylinder brush ✅
Ellipse brush ✅
Cube brush ✅
Width ✅
Color ✅
Opacity ✅
Directional opacity ❌
Frame by frame animation ⚠️
Looping ⚠️

Mesh material

Color and opacity are implemented via vertex attributes.

A single "Principled BSDF" material is created and shared by all imported meshes. This material reads the vertex colors and alpha attributes that were stored in the mesh during import.

Mesh animation

When importing the Quill timeline is currently fit into the Blender frame range and Quill frames outside that range are discarded.

Frame by frame animation of meshes isn't natively supported in Blender. Blender has other ways of animating meshes but for frame by frame animation it relies on "Mesh caches" stored in external files like Alembic or FBX.

In order to import frame by frame animation as meshes the addon creates a separate object for each drawing and animate the visibility of these objects so that only one object is visible on each frame.

Infinite loop is generally supported but restricting the number of loops is done in Quill via visibility keyframes on the parent which isn't supported.

Import as Grease Pencil

The following features are supported when importing paint layers as Grease Pencil

Feature Status
Ribbon brush ❌
Cylinder brush ✅
Ellipse brush ❌
Cube brush ❌
Width ✅
Color ✅
Opacity ✅
Directional opacity ❌
Frame by frame animation ❌
Looping ❌

All brushes are converted to the Grease Pencil line.

⚠️ Warning: if your Quill artwork uses the Ribbon brush a lot it will look completely broken when imported, because Grease Pencil is like a billboard always facing the viewer. It will not respect the orientation of the Ribbon, or of any other Quill brush. This is why the Cylinder brush, with its radial symmetry, is the only visually compatible brush.

Grease Pencil Caps type

All strokes are created with Caps type Round. Unlike Quill, Blender doesn't have a concept of strokes without caps. Note that the exporter always adds caps vertices to visually match the ending of Grease Pencil strokes so Quill strokes without caps cannot be round-tripped correctly, they will be closed during export.

Grease Pencil material

Width, color and opacity are assigned to the corresponding fields in the Grease Pencil stroke: pressure, vertex color and strength, respectively.

The created strokes use the default Grease Pencil material with Line type = Line, Style = Solid.

Grease Pencil frame by frame animation

Currently only the first drawing is imported.

Quill camera layers

Quill cameras are imported as Camera objects.

Feature Status
Field of view ✅

Import dialog

The import dialog has the following options

Include

Hidden layers

Import invisible Quill layers.

Cameras

Import Quill cameras and viewpoints.

Paint layers

Convert to

Behavior when importing paint layers

  • Mesh
  • Grease Pencil