🎞️ Frame By Plane

Frame By Plane works like Blender’s native “Image as Plane”… but built for animation.

Import images, sequences, folders and layered projects as controllable rigged planes, then animate each layer independently with a clean multiplane workflow inspired by the history of hand-made animation.

From Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette worlds, to the Disney multiplane camera, to the layered depth of Fleischer Studios, anime backgrounds, European cut-out animation and experimental cinema, Frame By Plane brings that same idea into Blender: separate layers, independent motion, camera depth, timing control and full creative freedom.

✨ What makes it different?

Blender can already import an image as a plane. Frame By Plane turns that simple idea into a complete animation system.

With Frame By Plane you can:

• import single images, image sequences, videos and folder-based projects;
• generate rigged planes with selectable controllers;
• animate every layer independently;
• edit the timing of individual frames;
• use custom FPS per frame or per sequence;
• create Color, Gradient and Holdout planes;
• crop and extend planes without destroying the original image;
• add wiggle motion;
• build multiplane scenes quickly;
• organize layers into collections;
• choose between native Blender image sequences or cached material playback.

🎨 Planes for every workflow

Frame By Plane supports multiple plane types:

🖼️ Image Plane

A single still image imported as a rigged plane.

🎞️ Image Sequence Plane

A folder of frames imported as an animated plane, with editable timing.

📁 Multiplane Project

Import multiple folders and sequences as separate layers or collections.

🎥 Video Plane

Experimental support for video files as animated planes.

🎨 Color Plane

Create solid-color animation frames directly inside Blender.

🌈 Gradient Plane

Create and animate gradient frames with linear/radial options.

⚫ Holdout Plane

Use procedural holdout planes for masking and compositing-style workflows.

🧭 Two playback backends

Frame By Plane includes two animation backends:

⚙️ Native Blender Image Sequence (experimental)

Uses Blender’s native Image Sequence system through ShaderNodeTexImage.

🚀 Frame By Plane Material Sequence

A cached material-based playback mode designed for smoother viewport performance in heavier scenes.

Choose the workflow that fits your project: cleaner native behavior or faster cached playback.

🏛️ Inspired by animation history

Frame By Plane is inspired by the layered construction of traditional animation.

Before digital compositing, artists created depth by separating backgrounds, characters, foreground elements, shadows and effects onto different physical layers.

This approach appears across animation history:

• Lotte Reiniger and silhouette animation;
• Walt Disney’s multiplane camera;
• Fleischer Studios and their dimensional tabletop setups;
• American cel animation;
• Japanese anime background layering;
• French, Italian and European cut-out traditions;
• experimental stop-motion and mixed-media cinema.

Frame By Plane brings that layered logic into Blender, making it easy to create depth, parallax, camera movement and animated 2D/2.5D scenes.

🧪 Beta note

This is a Beta release of the new Frame By Plane workflow.

The add-on is already suitable for testing real animation projects, but some systems are still experimental, especially:

• Native Blender Image Sequence backend;
• video import;
• complex project imports with unusual file naming.

Feedback, bug reports and workflow suggestions are welcome.