No More Guess Work

Previsualise how shots will work during Pre-Production.
Don't waste time later. Flag up issues instantly.


Pipleine Progress Comparison:
'PanelForge Studio' > 'Autodesk Maya Import' > 'Final Render'

'Digby Dragon' - Copyright Fizzy Production Ltd 2017

2D Drawing

Quickly create whole Panels or just add fine details to your 3D Layout.

3D Layout

Increase the quality of results and reduce drawing work.

Timeline Editing

Seamlessly set panel timings and mix multiple audio tracks.

Expansive Export

Powerful features to share your story in a multitude of ways.


So Powerfully Intuitive.

The PanelForge 2D drawing Canvas Workspace features powerful familiar tools.

No need for additional software packages, use our single App to streamline all your Storyboard Panel creation needs.

Includes Powerful selection tools with quick-mask. Fast move, transform and Distort tools. Blur and Colour adjustment effects.

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Optimised For The Modern World.

Think outside the box with a GPU accelerated boundless drawing area.

Stack multiple layers with custom blend modes to separate characters, fills and effects. Then rapidly adjust layer placements through a Panel sequence.

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Your Brush Style Personalised.

Convey your story with your unique style with our high-quality advanced brush engine.

Create custom personalised brushes, use our included presets or import widely available ‘Adobe Photoshop’ .abr brush files.

Powerful brush tip and paper texturing adjustments combined with detailed settings.

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A Virtual 3D Stage Made Easy.

Harness the power of 3D with PanelForge’s dedicated 3D Stage layout environment to increase accuracy and production efficiency.

Simply drop in 3D geometry assets or simple primitives to instantly create backdrops to your Panels.
Move and orientate characters and props in the environment with ‘Magic Transform’ single click to place tool.

Use the accurate camera model with intuitive controls to make sure your layout looks its best.

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The Best Quality Layout Visuals.

PanelForge includes a high quality modern 3D engine to make your 3D scene look amazing from simple grey surface blocking to full texturing and lighting all in real-time.

  • Gamma corrected output.
  • High Quality antialiasing.
  • Ambient occlusion shading.
  • Lighting with depth shadows.
  • Materials with textures and Normal Mapping.
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Realtime Animatic creation.

Take your animatic to the next level with the PanelForge built-in editing timeline. Simply drop in audio to the multitrack editor.

In retime, cut and preview your animatic in PanelForge then export to modern MP4 h.264 movie files.

Export, import and update timing from Adobe Premiere and Apple Final Cut Pro from PanelForge Studio.

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Empowering Asset Managment.

Quickly create Panel templates and assets libraries with our built-in asset management tools.

Drag and drop with preview thumbnails from our asset manager. Update, manage and relink assets simply.

Take the next step and integrate PanelForge with your pipeline with the custom XML data export (PanelForge Studio).

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Modern Technologies

We build PanelForge for the present and future. PanelForge is in continuous active development, improving features and supporting the latest technologies.

  • Windows HiDPI interface scaling.
  • Modern OpenGL Shader based Viewports.
  • 64bit Architecture.
  • Multi-Core multithreading optimisation.
  • Universal Windows stylus/pen input support.
  • Stylus/Pen sample buffering with Pressure and tilt.
  • High precision 16bit brush compositing with dithering.
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Export.

Share your story in a multitude of ways to make sure your vision is fulfilled. Whatever your next steps PanelForge has an export feature for you.


Video and Audio:

Seamlessly export high quality modern H.264 MP4 or lossless Quicktime movies.
Rapidly transform your traditional storyboard sequence to a dynamic animatic by adding custom timing and audio tracks.

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PDF Documents:

Create classic storyboard layouts with multiple layout presets.
Ready to print/email and share.

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Image Sequence:

Export with a range of output and overlay options in JPG or PNG (with alpha).
Ideal for use in conjunction with the Edit and Project XML export available in PanelForge Studio.

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Alembic 3D Animation Cache:

One click export of animated alembic geometry caches.
PanelForge automatically detects geometry and hierarchies between Panels to create animated sequences complete with animated Camera positions and settings.
Directly import into almost all modern 3D animation software as a superb template for the animation process.

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Edit XML (Studio Only):

Using the widely adopted Final Cut Pro 7 XML format. Import directly into Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut X with Panel timings and audio tracks.
Timing edits made externally can then be imported back to into PanelForge seamlessly.

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Project XML (Studio Only):

Export PanelForge data into a generic agnostic format. Use this data in a multitude of ways to integrate into your pipeline.

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Autodesk Maya Integration Tools (Studio Only):

Includes a comprehensive PanelForge Project XML Maya import tool.
This reference Maya Python script with UI allows for fast import of PanelForge Stage scenes with optional substitution to production Maya files.
Either use out of the box or customise for integration into your prefered asset management tools and in house tools.

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Feature List

PanelForge includes considerably more than highlighted above. The following is a more comprehensive list of the main features:

  • General Features
    • Microsoft Windows 10 support.
    • Support for Nvidia, AMD and Intel HD graphics platforms.
    • 64bit support and multithreaded acceleration.
    • Windows UI HiDPI Scaling graphics support.
    • Multiple Undo/Redo.
    • Customisable workspace interface with palette window tabbing and docking.
    • Interface tooltips with links to online documentation.
    • Integrated crash reporting tools and Bug tracking web interface.
    • Lightweight Windows installer or Run from movable directory.
    • Application file icons and operating system file type integration.
  • Project Interaction
    • Multiple media library directory sources.
    • Media thumbnail preview and information display.
    • Project wide Asset Manager for fast asset update/replacement.
    • Drag and drop media library entries to workspace areas.
    • Drag and drop Panels and Canvas Layers from workspace area to media Library.
    • Automatic checking and updating of referenced stage objects from
    • Import multiple 3D assets retaining hierarchy.
  • Media Libraries Management
    • Real-time panel timeline playback.
    • Fixed and separate panel timing editing.
    • Automatic panel naming with custom arbitrary name support.
    • Interactively updated panel thumbnail previews.
    • Multiple Panel selection drag and drop timeline reordering.
    • Panel Duplication.
    • Project merging.
    • Automatic unloading of unused panel files.
    • Editable panel Action, Dialogue, Camera and Information text.
    • Customisable display style of panel text and boundary overlays.
    • Project information summary display.
    • Multi Track Audio editing.
    • Import of a wide range audio formats (MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF).
    • Create project or Sync clip timing from Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro.
  • 2D Canvas
    • Graphic tablet pressure, tilt and high precession input support.
    • Infinite boundless drawing area.
    • Multiple Layers with opacity and blend options and thumbnail preview.
    • OpenGL accelerated drawing and layer compositing with antialiasing.
    • Interactive view panning, zooming and tilting.
    • Efficient tile based bitmap layer storage.
    • Advanced brush engine with detailed settings and textures.
    • Import Adobe Photoshop Brush Files.
    • Full 8bit current selection mask and Marching ants selection preview.
    • Quick mask display with paint and erase tool editing.
    • Apply Gaussian, motion and zoom blur effects.
    • Adjust colour brightness, contrast hue and saturation
    • Multiple Colour Picker and Colour Slider interfaces.
    • Colour Swatches interface with support for Adobe Photoshop swatch files.
    • Omnipresent quick selectable favourite colour swatches.
    • Import of a wide range bitmap image formats (JPG, PNG, BMP, TIF, TGA, GIF, DDS).
  • 2D Canvas Tools
    • Copy, Cut and Paste between different panels and third party applications.
    • Freeform, line, rectangle and oval painting/erasing tools.
    • Brush stroke smooth interpolation.
    • Flow, opacity, radius, hardness and spacing brush stroke options.
    • Paint behind brush option.
    • Control brush radius and flow via graphics tablet pressure.
    • Fill paint bucket tool.
    • Eyedropper colour selection tool.
    • Interactive move and free transform tools with bi-cubic interpolation.
    • Marquee rectangle selection tool.
    • Freeform and Polygonal lasso selection tool.
    • Magic wand selection tool.
  • 3D Stage
    • Modern high quality OpenGL 3D display engine.
    • High, Fast, Wireframe and Box display modes.
    • Multiple perspective and orthographic cameras.
    • Copy, Cut and Paste objects and object attributes between panels.
    • Object hierarchy and grouping.
    • Arbitrary object pivot point manipulation.
    • Multiple Spot and directional lights.
    • Interactive light depth map shadows.
    • Referenced library managed geometry objects.
    • Alembic, OBJ, 3DS and Custom optimised geometry file import.
    • Decal image texture projection objects.
    • Simple Locator objects.
    • Gamma corrected output.
    • Anti-aliased with alpha output.
    • Screen Space ambient occlusion.
    • Object independent material list.
    • Interactive object material editing.
    • Material texture map support.
    • Environment map reflection.
    • Marquee selection of stage objects.
    • Interaction object transform manipulators.
    • Interactive navigation and object movement heads up display.
    • Object translate keyboard nudging.
    • Fit camera view to stage objects.
  • Data Export
    • Panel Image Sequence Export (PNG with alpha, JPEG).
    • Movie file Export (MP4 H.264 AAC, QuickTime Lossless).
    • Multiple PDF layout File Export options.
    • Generic Project/Panel Data XML export.
    • Alembic Geometry Cache export.
    • Final Cut Pro XML 7 file edit Export (Premiere Pro compatible).
    • Final Cut Pro XML 7 timing syncing (Premiere Pro compatible).
  • Autodesk Maya Integration Tools
    • Maya Python customisable PanelForge Project XML importer.
    • Easy Pipeline and Asset management integration.
    • Optimised PanelForge Geometry file format export Plugin.

PF PanelForge Studio

For Production Use

Contact Us For a Free Evaluation

£1000 EX. VAT

Seat/User Yearly Plan

  • Licensed for use on any size Project.
  • Unlimited Panel Amount*.
  • Priority Email Support.
  • Phone/Video-Conference Support on Request.
  • AutoDesk™ Maya™ Import/Export Tools.
  • Adobe™ Premiere™ Import/Export Tools.
  • Powerful Python Scripting (including Qt UIs).
  • Additional Python based 'Bonus Tools'.
  • All features of 'PanelForge Pro' and more.

PF PanelForge Pro

For Indie and Enthusiasts

Download Free Beta Now!

From Only £6 INC. VAT

User Monthly Plan*

  • For Smaller Budgeted Projects Only*.
  • Up to 500 Panels per PanelForge Project file.
  • Support via Community Forum.
  • Full 2D Drawing Canvas & 3D Layout Stage functionality.
  • Interactive Timeline editing (with Multitrack Audio).
  • Advanced Panel and Asset Management.
  • Image Sequence Export (including Layered Photoshop™ files).
  • Modern 'H.264' Video/Audio file & Multiple 'PDF' Layout Export.
  • Alembic 3D Scene Export (Blender™, Cinema 4D™, Maya™, etc.).

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Background
CATE ELLIOTT
Director of Production

JELLYFISH PICTURES

"It provides our directors with the confidence that their creative vision is achievable as early as Storyboard.
Being able to optimise sets, and pre-determine camera positions and camera moves at such an early stage makes for a more efficient and creative process."

ADAM SHAW
Creative/Series Director

BLUE ZOO ANIMATION

"For me PanelForge has revolutionised pre-production,
saving me time and stress in production.
Leaving me with more time to be creative, and crucially the animators with clear and precise direction."