GP Tool Wheel

a Grease Pencil addon for Blender 3.0+ –– switch quickly between tools

Using Grease Pencil and switching a lot between modes and tools? Then GP Tool Wheel can speed up your workflow: it combines mode and tool selection in one delicious wheel.

How to use the wheel – press F8

By default you can invoke the tool wheel with the shortcut F8. You can change this shortcut easily by customizing your wheel.

The wheel only appears when there is an active Grease Pencil object.

Selecting a tool needs no explanation: click on an icon and you are good to go.

Switching mode only: Tap 1...6 on your keyboard. Or click near the colored dot in the center space of the wheel.

Customize your wheel

You can customize your wheel in the add-on preferences.

Up to Blender 4.1, go to Edit > Preferences... > Add-ons and look for 3D View: GP Tool Wheel.

For Blender 4.2 and higher, go to Edit > Preferences... > Extensions and look for GP Tool Wheel.

Click on the arrow on the left.

Here you can compose your ideal, tailor made wheel. Perhaps you want to change it in a kind of 'Quick favorites' menu, with only the modes and tools you often use. Or assign Tab as shortcut, replacing the default pie menu.

Circle of GP life: defining the order of modes

Don't show what you don't need: selecting your favorite tools

Transfer preferences to other computer or Blender installation: you can save the preferences to a .json file and distribute that file to other computers or Blender installations.

Installation

GP Tool Wheel is suited for Blender 3.0 and higher.

Up to Blender 4.1, installation of the add-on is done in the usual Blender way:

• Download the latest release. (Make sure it is a zip file, not automatically unzipped.)
• In Blender, go to Edit > Preferences... > Add-ons. Click on Install... and select the zip file.
• When the stars are in your favour, the add-on appears. Activate it.
• And since you are here: click on the add-on arrow and take a look at the preferences straight away.

Having issues? Or wishes?

Create a ticket and I'll see what I can do.

Changelog

• v1.0.5 - 2024-05-23
  • Now uses UI scale: bigger wheel when UI scale is higher
  • Support for Grease Pencil v3
  • Save and load preferences to a custom file path
  • Made ready as extension for extensions.blender.org
• v1.0.4 – 2023-05-26
  • Support for Blender 4.0
  • Support for gradient weight paint tool (yet to come in Blender)
• v1.0.3 – 2023-04-07
  • Support for new weight paint tools (Blur, Average, Smear)
  • Fix: brush size error when opening tool wheel in older GP files
• v1.0.2 – 2023-02-07
  • Default keyboard shortcut changed to F8
• v1.0.1 – 2023-01-02
  • Code cleanup
• v1.0.0 – 2022-11-16
  • Initial release