by Cosmo Mídias·Motion Graphics
Images © Cosmo Mídias. Used for product review; image policy.
3D Onion Skinning earns its place in the superhive library for building onion skinning on Blender's native geometry node system, with no external dependencies and support for objects ranging from meshes to instanced collections.
3D Onion Skinning is a Blender add-on for relative frame baking: it bakes and displays frames before and after your current frame, with customizable frame counts and colors. The result is a multi-frame visual progression aimed at analyzing timing and spacing in your animations.
The add-on updates on the fly. It refreshes automatically when you change frames with the keyboard arrows or scrub the timeline, and it supports the Timeline Scrub feature from Blender's built-in Grease Pencil add-on, while updates are avoided during playback. It also updates when you add, remove, or translate keyframes or graph handles. Onion frames can be viewed in both Solid and Render modes through translucent materials with distinct, customizable colors, fading, and opacity.
Object support covers meshes, curves, surfaces, fonts, metas, and instanced collections, plus library overrides and linked data, with vertex group support for targeting specific geometry areas. Specific objects can be bypassed via the eye icon while kept on stand-by, and decimated sources are available for onion generation. Built on Python and Blender's geometry node system, it works natively from Blender 4.5 LTS and up with no external dependencies.
3D Onion Skinning is best for students and educators learning animation principles, character animators visualizing pose-to-pose timing, motion graphics artists working on complex transitions, and game developers fine-tuning gameplay animations.
3D Onion Skinning is completely free to download and use.
3D Onion Skinning works natively from Blender 4.5 LTS and up. It's built on Python and Blender's geometry node system, so it runs inside Blender without external dependencies, and baking relies on that native geometry node tech to keep overhead low. Since Blender 4.5 LTS is the stated minimum, check the developer's page for details before installing if you're on an earlier release, so you know what to expect from the add-on.
3D Onion Skinning requires no external dependencies. It's built on Python and Blender's native geometry node system, baking frame data efficiently with minimal overhead, which means it draws on technology already inside Blender rather than pulling in outside libraries. For onion generation you can also use decimated sources, or the simplest possible objects, to improve responsiveness and performance when you're working across heavier or more complex scenes.
3D Onion Skinning opens with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+O for instant pop-up access anywhere in the UI, and that shortcut is customizable. The interface is compact, and you can choose not to display it in the Side Panel if it's already crowded. Every parameter includes tooltips, the object list is expandable for easier management, and you can create and edit shortcuts for any operation as you wish to fit how you work.
3D Onion Skinning supports meshes, curves, surfaces, fonts, metas, and even instanced collections. It works with library overrides and linked data, and includes vertex group support for targeting specific geometry areas. You can also bypass specific objects on the fly while keeping them on stand-by through the eye icon, which helps in complex multi-object scenes, and decimated sources are available for onion generation.
3D Onion Skinning is listed as free in this catalog. For current licensing terms, download details, and any conditions, check the developer's page. The add-on is distributed for Blender 4.5 LTS and up with no external dependencies, and support plus documentation are available through the developer's community channels if you need help getting started or want to report issues. A demo video is also available.
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