Pen View is a Blender add-on designed to improve viewport workflow for artists using pen tablets, compact keyboards, or laptops without a numeric keypad. It provides fast access to viewport controls, mode switching, sculpt brushes, measurement guides, and head proportion tools through a customizable popup and sidebar interface.
Main Popup |
Brush Popup |
- View orientation shortcuts (Top, Bottom, Front, Back, Left, Right)
- Object, Edit, Sculpt, and Texture Paint mode switching
- Move, Rotate, and Scale gizmo selection
- 90-degree rotation helper (X, Y, Z axes)
- Wireframe overlay with opacity control
- Viewport wireframe and X-Ray toggle
- Face orientation overlay
- Texture Paint wireframe overlay
- Vertex, Edge, and Face selection modes
- Grow / Shrink selection (Expand / Contract)
- Customizable brush slot panel (up to 7 brushes) via the N Panel
- Quick popup with your configured brushes, grouped by category
- Full brush library organized by category: General, Paint, Simulation, Tools
- 2-column grid layout per category
- Calculates a proportion grid from the bounding box of any selected mesh
- Displays horizontal lines (skull, hairline, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin)
- Displays vertical lines for front view (left/right borders, outer, inner, center)
- Displays vertical lines for side view (nose, lips, eye, skull mid, skull back)
- All lines are individually adjustable via sliders in the N Panel
- Reset to default values with one button
- Show / Hide lines without losing the calculated proportions
- Works in both Front Orthographic and Side Orthographic views
- Visible across multiple viewports when using split viewport layout
- Hide selection (H), hide unselected (Shift+H), unhide all (Alt+H)
- Works in both Object and Edit mode
- Import base meshes (female and male) directly into the scene
- Replace any selected mesh with a blockout asset matching its size and position
- Female and male part libraries: head, ear, neck, torso, arms, hands, legs, feet, and more
- Imported assets are placed in a dedicated "Blockout" collection
The main popup adapts its content based on the active editor:
- 3D Viewport — mode switching, gizmos, overlays, sculpt tools, proportions
- UV Editor — unwrap, smart project, pack islands, selection tools
- Shader Editor — node tools, add Principled BSDF / Image Texture
- Compositor — node tools
- Geometry Nodes — node tools
- Dopesheet / Timeline — keyframe insert and delete
- Graph Editor — keyframe tools, interpolation (Linear / Bezier)
- Texture Paint — mode switching, brush size and strength
- Properties / Outliner — render image and animation
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Shift + Q |
Open main popup |
Ctrl + Shift + Q |
Open brush popup |
Shift + M |
Start measurement guide |
Alt + M |
Clear measurement guide |
All shortcuts can be reassigned in Blender's keymap editor under Edit → Preferences → Keymap.
Pen View must be installed as a classic Blender add-on, not through the Extensions system.
- Download the repository as a ZIP file from GitHub.
- Extract the ZIP file.
- Open Blender.
- Go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons.
- Click Install Add-on from Disk....
- Navigate to the downloaded ZIP file, select it, and click Install Add-on.
- Search for Pen View in the Add-ons list and enable it.
- Install and enable the add-on.
- In the N Panel → Pen View tab, add up to 7 brushes to your quick slots.
- Use
Shift + Qto open the main viewport popup. - Use
Ctrl + Shift + Qto open your configured brush popup. - To use head proportions: select the reference mesh and click Head Proportions in the N Panel. Split your viewport to see the grid on both views simultaneously.
The base meshes included in this add-on are adapted from assets by MrPumpkinDev on Sketchfab, licensed under CC Attribution 4.0 International. Changes were made: meshes were adapted and split into individual body part assets for use as blockout references.
- Blender 5.1 or newer
GNU General Public License v3 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later)