Draw in 3D.
Animate like a pro.
GhostPencilPro brings Blender's Grease Pencil workflow natively into 3ds Max — multi-layer 2D/3D drawing, frame-by-frame animation, pen tablet support, and a full modifier stack. All inside a standard scene object.
GhostPencilPro — Not just a pencil, it's a pen's soul. Where 2D breathes inside a 3D world.
Use Cases
GhostPencilPro fills a wide range of roles depending on your pipeline and artistic goals.
Pre-Production & Scene Planning
Sketch directly on top of your 3D environment to plan compositions, block out camera cuts and mark areas of interest — without touching geometry.
- Guide lines & annotations — proportion guides, golden-ratio grids or written notes that float in 3D space.
- Layout blocking — rough-sketch silhouettes before committing geometry.
- Camera path sketching — draw the intended camera trajectory directly in the viewport.
2D Animation Living in 3D Space
GhostPencilPro strokes exist as real 3D geometry — they respond to 3D cameras, lighting and depth of field. This enables Dishonored / Deathloop–style effects:
- Impact & hit effects — frame-by-frame drawn flashes and speed lines that follow 3D object positions.
- Magic / VFX overlays — looping hand-drawn rune animations on a billboard plane facing the camera.
- Retro / lo-fi motion — deliberately choppy cel-animation jitter using the Wiggle system.
Stylized 2D + 3D Hybrid Rendering
Combine stroke layers with 3ds Max geometry for a mixed-media aesthetic — the visual language of Borderlands, Hi-Fi Rush, or Guilty Gear Strive:
- Ink outlines on 3D models — Object Tracker keeps them attached as the model animates.
- Crosshatching & shading — hand-draw tonal passes on top of 3D renders.
- Flat colour fills — cel-shaded colour passes using Multiply or Overlay blend modes.
Concept Art & Storyboarding Inside Max
Stay inside 3ds Max for the full ideation-to-production pipeline without switching to an external paint app:
- Draw On Surface — strokes conform to the mesh surface for anatomy or costume sketching.
- Storyboard panels — build a rough animatic with camera moves, entirely inside a single .max file.
- Texture & UV annotations — mark UV seams and surface details as guide strokes.
Qt Toolbar
A custom floating Qt toolbar that mirrors the most important drawing modes so you can collapse the command panel while sketching.
Quick access to Draw, Line, Circle, Box, Smudge, Relax, Erase, and Bucket Fill.
Switch between Vertices, Segments, Splines, Gradients, Grid, and Symmetry directly from the floating bar.
Real-time readouts of Brush Radius, Opacity, and Color Swatch.
The toolbar can be docked to any edge of the 3ds Max UI or left floating over the viewport.
Sub-Object Level Editing
GhostPencilPro is a native 3ds Max scene object. It exposes specialized Sub-Object levels for direct point, stroke, and manipulator gizmo control — exactly like Editable Spline or Poly.
Note: Interactive sculpting tools (Smudge, Relax, Erase, Bucket Fill) operate at the object level via Ghost Tools — you do not need sub-object mode.
Every rollout features a Pop-out icon (◳) in its title header. Clicking detaches the rollout into an independent floating window. Position your most-used rollouts — Layers, Brushes, Draw Options — anywhere on screen or on secondary monitors.
Ghost Tools
The main drawing tools rollup. All primary interaction modes live here.
- Fill Loop Mode: Instantly draw polygon shapes that automatically flood-fill in real-time.
- Auto-Close Smart Prompt: Automatically snaps to the start vertex and prompts to close the shape when drawing near it.
- Advanced Vertex Types: Full support for bezier handles via the Modify Panel (Corner, Smooth, Bezier, Bezier Corner) on any polyline vertex.
Tolerance (scene units) for closing small gaps in outlines before flood-filling. Increase if the fill leaks.
When active, bucket filling creates a transparent hole instead of a solid fill.
Deletes the entire stroke when any of its points enter the brush radius.
Surgically removes only the individual points under the brush.
Rectangle, Ellipse, Lasso (free-hand), or Polygon (sharp corners).
All Layers or Selected Layer — restricts tools to the active layer.
Pick native 3ds Max splines and convert instantly into GhostPencilPro strokes or fills.
Export tools to bake strokes down to standard splines or meshes.
Circle, Rectangle, Hexagon, Star, Egg, Arrow, Gear, Parallelogram.
Selected Layer draws into the current layer. Make New creates a fresh layer per shape.
Quick color pickers for stroke outline and internal fill colors.
Sets the exact thickness of the generated shape.
Draw Options
Controls the 3D plane on which strokes are painted. Every stroke is recorded in world-space on a plane you define here.
Preset selector:
View — always faces the active camera.
Front / Top / Left — world-aligned axis planes.
Custom — manually positioned via X, Y, Z and Yaw/Pitch spinners.
Pinned (face view) — locks to current camera angle at activation.
World-space position of the custom drawing plane origin.
Horizontal rotation of the custom plane (degrees).
Vertical tilt of the custom plane (degrees).
Teleports the plane center to the current viewport camera target.
Aligns the drawing plane to the pivot of a picked scene object.
Draws a visual reference grid on the active drawing plane in the viewport.
Projects every stroke point onto the nearest surface of scene geometry as you draw.
Lifts projected points off the surface by this distance in scene units (prevents Z-fighting).
Limits surface projection to geometry within this depth from the drawing plane.
Enables live mirror symmetry along the chosen world axis. Each stroke is mirrored in real time.
Pick a node whose pivot defines the symmetry origin and orientation.
Displays the name of the currently picked symmetry node.
Brush & Colors
Every aspect of how strokes look and feel — from pixel width to custom Photoshop stamp brushes.
Width multipliers across the stroke length.
Locks Start, Mid, and End spinners together for uniform thickness.
Smoothing passes applied after drawing. Higher values = cleaner curves.
Automatically fills the interior of any closed stroke with the Fill color.
The primary outline/edge color of the stroke.
The interior fill color used when Fill Closed is on or brush type is Solid Fill.
Global opacity of new strokes (0–100%). Blends with layer opacity.
Enables pen-tablet or touch pressure to modulate stroke width dynamically.
The opacity floor at the lightest pen pressure (0–1). Prevents fully transparent strokes.
Assign any bitmap or Photoshop brush set as the stamp texture for Custom / Stamp mode.
Opens the 3ds Max material browser to select any BitmapTex as the stamp image.
Removes the current stamp map and resets to solid-stroke rendering.
Parses the .abr file and saves all extracted PNG stamps to %TEMP%\MaxPencil\ so they persist between sessions.
Tiling multipliers for the stamp texture coordinates.
Copies all current brush settings to every selected stroke in the viewport.
Stroke ends are drawn perfectly round instead of flat/squared off.
"Lazy mouse" drag string to smooth out hand jitter while drawing.
Fine-grained control over how the stamp image is distributed along the stroke path. Visible only when Brush Type is Custom / Stamp or Map.
Layers
Non-destructive, stackable layers — the backbone of the GhostPencilPro workflow.
The list shows all layers and group folders in render order (top = drawn last = on top).
Creates a new empty drawing layer above the current selection.
Permanently deletes the selected layer(s) and all their strokes.
Duplicates the selected layer(s) with all strokes, keyframes, blend modes, and settings.
Merges selected layers or group folders into a single unified layer.
Moves the selected layer one position up or down in the rendering stack.
Create, group, or ungroup layer group folders.
Detaches the Layers rollout into an independent floating window.
Toggle viewport and render visibility for individual layers or group folders.
Freeze layer to prevent accidental drawing, erasing, or stroke editing.
Per-layer global transparency slider (0–100%).
27 Photoshop-standard blend modes (Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, etc.).
Clips the layer to the alpha boundary of the layer directly below, with Invert controls.
Toggles frame ghosting specifically for the layer during animation.
Enables automatic vector stroke tweening between keyframes.
Instant search bar to quickly locate layers by name in complex multi-layer scenes.
Native Modifiers Stack
GhostPencilPro is fully integrated into the 3ds Max Modifier Stack. Apply 13 live procedural effects non-destructively.
Number of parallel duplicate strokes.
Spread distance between duplicates.
Random displacement of stroke points.
Width randomization, fractal size, and intensity.
Distribution curve of the envelope.
Thickness multiplier and dashed envelope control.
Trims or extends the stroke from its starting point.
Trims or extends the stroke from its final point.
Duration to fully draw the strokes.
Start delay and manual 0–1 build slider.
Number of recursive subdivisions applied to each stroke segment.
Number of array copies.
Incremental offsets with random jitter.
Simplification passes and aggressiveness.
Distance threshold for redundant point removal.
Strength of the smoothing algorithm per pass.
Number of smoothing iterations to apply.
3D location shift.
3D rotational shift and uniform scale multiplier.
Screen-space offset for the cast shadow.
Transparency of the shadow.
Thickness of the generated inner/outer rim line.
Shifts, desaturates, or brightens stroke colors procedurally.
Blends the stroke color with the layer's active solid tint.
Standard Effects
Post-process and transformation effects applied per-layer.
Adds procedural noise to vertex positions every few frames to simulate the hand-drawn "boiling" effect of traditional cel animation.
Strength of the random offset applied to stroke vertices.
How often the noise seed changes (e.g. 2 = drawing on 2s).
Links the current layer's transform to an animated scene object without standard 3ds Max hierarchy links.
Click to select the target mesh or helper to follow.
Toggles tracking while retaining the picked node reference.
Adds an additive glow effect — perfect for neon signs, lightsabers, and magical FX.
The blur spread distance of the glow.
The brightness multiplier of the glow effect.
Forces all strokes on the layer to render as a single flat color, overriding individual vertex or brush colors.
Click to pick the override tint.
0 to 100 slider controlling how strongly the override color mixes with the original stroke colors.
Special FX
Advanced procedural drawing generators that analyze 3D geometry or motion to create automated strokes. All tools in this rollup require picking an external 3D mesh from the scene.
Automatically extracts feature-line strokes from a picked 3D mesh.
Selects the source mesh to analyze for feature lines.
Angle threshold for sharp edges and stroke thickness.
Extracts outer contour edges as seen from the camera.
Extracts internal sharp geometric edges.
Extracts open mesh boundaries or holes.
Extracts edges where the Material ID changes.
Color picker for the generated strokes.
Converts the edge analysis into static GhostPencilPro strokes on the active layer.
Continuously recalculates the line art as the camera or mesh animates.
Generates speed-dash trails or full silhouette ghosting behind animated objects.
Select an animated scene object to trail.
Choose between speed-lines (Trails) or full object silhouettes (Ghosting).
Number of echoes and the frame interval between them.
Stroke width and opacity fade over the trail's length.
Controls the density and visual style of the generated strokes.
Threshold below which trails will not be generated.
Inherit the target object's wireframe color.
A custom 16-color palette to colorize the motion echoes over their lifetime.
Number of active swatches to use in the cycle.
Click to define the exact colors the trail blends through over time.
Anime and comic-style detail lines that follow the picked mesh surface and lighting.
Select the source mesh for hatching.
Controls the density of hatch lines and offset from the mesh surface.
Dimensions and rotation of the hatch strokes.
Random variation seed and stroke color.
Bends lines to the mesh contour.
Only on camera-facing normals, or only in shadowed areas.
Stroke rendering style (e.g. Linear, Spindle).
Bake to a layer or calculate dynamically per frame.
Animation & Retimer
Tools for managing keyframes, onion skinning, motion timing, sequence chaining, and pose switching for 2D animation.
Manually add a keyframe at the current time.
Duplicate the current frame's drawing to the next blank frame.
Delete the current keyframe.
Step forward or backward between existing drawn keyframes.
Drawing on a new frame automatically generates a keyframe.
Instantly deletes all strokes from the active layer on the current frame.
Displays ghosted overlays of previous and upcoming frames to help maintain volumes and track motion paths.
Master checkbox to toggle the onion skin display.
How many past frames to display.
How many future frames to display.
Color picker to tint all previous frames.
Color picker to tint all upcoming frames.
Pick target GhostPencilPro scene object to retime.
Master toggle for retiming.
Regular / Reverse / Freeze / Loop / Ping-Pong
Speed multiplier (1.0 = normal, 0.5 = 2× slow-mo)
Chain multiple playback modes sequentially:
Slot 1: Regular / Reverse [Count] Slot 2: Reverse / Freeze [Count] Slot 3: Regular / Loop [Count]
Select pose label (e.g. Pose A, Pose B).
Tags current frame as a key pose marker.
0.00 – 1.00 slider to morph and blend between tagged key poses.
Inserts a keyframe on the Pose Switcher for smooth pose transitions.
Gradient
Applies an advanced multi-stop gradient projection across the strokes on the current layer.
Choose between a Linear or Radial gradient shape.
The overall scale or spread of the gradient projection.
A visual ramp showing all color stops.
Insert a new color stop or delete the currently selected stop.
The exact percentage position of the selected stop along the ramp.
The color picker for the selected stop.
X, Y, Z positional offset.
Stretches the gradient projection along the X or Y axis.
Rotates the gradient projection in 3D space.
Pans the gradient along the UV coordinates.
Scales the gradient texture.
Rotates the 2D gradient texture projection.
Palette
A quick-access grid of 16 customizable color swatches for fast color picking while drawing.
Sets the active brush color to the swatch.
Opens the 3ds Max Color Picker to redefine the swatch color.
Palettes can be saved to disk as .gpal files and loaded into any GhostPencilPro object.
Display & Settings
Controls how strokes are rendered in the viewport and provides access to the global preset manager and shortcut binder.
Toggles the entire GhostPencilPro object on or off.
Controls whether the strokes appear in final renders (V-Ray, Arnold, Corona, etc.).
Global opacity multiplier for all layers combined.
Forces all strokes to face the current camera — useful for 2D billboard FX.
Locks stroke scale to the screen so they don't get smaller as the camera moves away.
GhostPencilPro_Presets.ini and only fire while a GhostPencilPro tool/object is active.MAXScript API Automation
Automate and control GhostPencilPro programmatically via MAXScript for pipeline TD tools.
-- GhostPencilPro API Elements
local gp = $GhostPencilPro001
-- 1. Create a new layer
gp.addLayer "LineArt"
gp.setLayerOpacity "LineArt" 0.8
-- 2. Set brush properties
gp.brushWidth = 5.0
gp.brushOpacity = 1.0
gp.brushColor = color 255 255 255
-- 3. Procedurally generate strokes
gp.drawStroke #( [0,0,0], [10,0,0], [10,10,0] )
-- 4. Validate with built-in methods
if gp.doesFileExist "C:\temp\brush.png" do
gp.importBrush "C:\temp\brush.png"
-- Non-API Native Elements local gp = $GhostPencilPro001 -- 1. Standard Object Transforms gp.pos = [0, 0, 100] gp.rotation = (eulerangles 0 0 45) -- 2. Adding Native Modifiers addModifier gp (Bend angle:90 direction:0) addModifier gp (Lattice Strut_Radius:0.5) -- 3. Standard Material Assignment gp.material = StandardMaterial diffuse:red -- 4. Visibility and Render Control gp.isHidden = false gp.renderable = true
Use mslint.py to pre-validate your MAXScript before execution. Extracts real-time API signatures from GhostPencilPro.cpp: PS C:\> python mslint.py my_script.ms ==================================================================== mslint — MAXScript Linter API Signatures: From GhostPencilPro_2026 (74 methods) ==================================================================== ✗ my_script.ms — 3 issues found Line 12 [Reserved Word] `local` is a reserved word. Line 45 [API Error] `gp.fakeMethod` not found in API. Line 78 [API Error] `gp.addLayer` called with 0 args, expects 1. Line 80 [Fake Loop] `downTo` is not standard MAXScript. ====================================================================
Functions directly exposed from the C++ plugin core to MAXScript & Python via GhostPencilProAPI interface to access internal C++ objects (GLayer, GStroke, GPoint, WidthProfile).
Licensing & Tiers
GhostPencilPro uses a seamless activation system connected to Gumroad, with tiers designed for every team size.
Credits & Support
Information about the plugin, version details, and links to support resources, tutorials, and developer credits.