Your references,inside Blender.

Pinvas pins pictures, clips, notes and sketches to a board in the 3D View's sidebar. Press N, open the Pinvas tab and work beside them.

Install Pinvas The three-minute start

Pinvas 1.0.0 for Blender 5.0 or newer. The board saves with your .blend.

The Pinvas tab open beside Blender's 3D View, with five old-master studies inside a frame titled Anatomy studies and a pinned note

The E eyedropper clicked on a painting; a swatch at the foot of the board shows the colour as a hex code

A Muybridge horse clip on the board, played, paused and scrubbed along its strip

Leonardo's skull study with the eye socket and teeth circled and dot pointers to their labels, and arrows labelled Cheekbone and Cut-away half

Eight things to tryeach in a few seconds.

Click a clip to see it full size. Every one is the real add-on, recorded in Blender.

Ctrl P

Tidy a pile of references in one go

Select some pictures and press Ctrl+P. Optimal packs them into one tight block that fits your board. Group them under a titled Frame, or line them up from the Arrange menu.

Pick a colour straight from a picture

Press E, then click a picture. The colour under the mouse is copied as a hex code you can paste anywhere, or send To Brush or To Material from the right-click menu. Press F to view one picture on its own, and Esc to go back.

Space

Study motion and timing from a clip

Drop a clip onto the board and press Space to play it. Step a frame with Left and Right, switch on Follow Timeline so the clip follows Blender's current frame, or loop one action with Set Loop Start Here and Set Loop End Here.

Draw

Sketch over a reference

Press the pencil Draw button and a tool strip appears: Pen, Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Text and Eraser. Hold Shift for a circle or a square and Alt to draw from the middle. Drawings stay on the board until you send them.

Circle, point and label

Circle a part with the Ellipse, point at another with an Arrow, and click with the Text tool to type a label. An arrow can end in a round dot that marks one exact spot. Then press V or pick Select and click a drawing: pick a colour or weight in the style column and it takes it, in one undo step. Drag a drawing to move it, or drag the round handle at either end of a line or arrow.

Right-click

Send a sketch or image into your scene

Select your drawings, right-click and choose Send to Scene, then Drawing as Grease Pencil. You get one real Grease Pencil object with its colours, line weights, fills and arrow heads. A picture goes the same way, as an Image Plane, an Image Empty or a Camera Background.

Shift P

Group pictures in a frame

Select some pictures and press Shift+P. Type a title and the frame fits round them. Drag the frame and everything in it moves; drag a picture out and the frame follows.

Right-click

Everything a picture can do, one click away

Right-click a picture for its tools. Send to Scene places it as a Camera Background, an Image Empty or an Image Plane. Greyscale, Flip Horizontally and the Proportion Grid help you judge it, and Overlay lets you see through the board to the viewport.

More of what it doesin the full guide.

Read the full guide

Ctrl+VPaste or drop picturesPaste a screenshot or a copied picture over the board, or drop files from your file manager onto it.Add and edit pictures Ctrl+PLay pictures outPack them tight, or set them out as a row, column or grid, give them the same size, or line them up.Arrange the board EColours and valuesCopy a hex colour, make a palette from a picture with Make Palette, and judge light and dark with Greyscale.Judge a picture

SpaceClips on the boardPlay, scrub and loop clips at 0.25x to 2x, or make a clip follow Blender's timeline.Videos StitchSeveral clips as onePlay clips one after another as one video, each trimmed without cutting the file, wired like nodes.Stitch videos

Shift+PNotes, frames and drawingGroup pictures under a titled Frame, pin a Note, or draw lines, arrows and shapes with the pencil Draw button.Notes, frames and drawing OverlaySee-through overlayMake the board see-through and send every click to the viewport, so you can trace or model over your references.Dock, undock and overlay

UndockA window of its ownUndock the board into a window you can drag to a second monitor, on Windows; elsewhere it floats over the viewport.Dock, undock and overlay .pinvasBoards and exportKeep one board per project, link a board to an object, or export a board as a .pinvas file or as one PNG.Boards and files

Pin your first reference.

Install the extension, press N in the 3D View and paste a picture with Ctrl V. The three-minute start shows the rest.

Install Pinvas The three-minute start