Advanced Vertex Paint

Blender 3.3 – 5.2 · Windows, macOS and Linux · Basic and Pro

Vertex color for real work. Fill, set alpha and remove color across many meshes in one click, and paint every selected mesh at once with Blender's own Vertex Paint brushes. Pro adds Photoshop-style layers and procedural color from occlusion, curvature, textures and a light that follows your mouse.

It appears in Blender's add-on list as Advanced Vertex Color (Basic) or Advanced Vertex Color Pro.

Getting started

The card

The card is the add-on's interface: a floating panel drawn in the viewport, in the same navy and blue as the rest of the Tachyon Studio tools.

Buttons that cannot act right now are greyed out, so the card always shows what is possible from where you are.

Fill, alpha and remove

A mesh with no color attribute gets one the first time you color it. Faces are filled per corner, so neighbouring faces can hold different colors without bleeding into each other.

Paint every selected mesh at once

Paint opens one Vertex Paint session across all the selected meshes. They are merged into a single temporary paint mesh in a Paint tab, so a stroke can cross from one mesh onto the next, and every Vertex Paint brush Blender has works on all of them together.

• Red / Green / Blue set the brush color while you paint. Remove paints white.
• Started from Edit Mode with only some faces selected, the session paints only those faces (face masking on), and only on the meshes you were editing.
• Apply writes the paint back into each mesh, in each mesh's own color format. Cancel throws it away and puts every mesh back exactly as it was.
• Leaving Vertex Paint any other way — switching mode, changing workspace — applies the paint too. Only Cancel discards it.
• Editing the paint mesh's geometry during a session is refused: it could no longer be split back into the originals. Undo the edit, or cancel.

Gradient

In a Paint session, Gradient lets you drag a line across the meshes. The colors blend along it and stay live until you apply.

Spline

Spline is a freehand gradient. Draw a stroke over the meshes; when you let go it is fitted to a smooth curve with a few points, and the colors follow the curve. Drag any point to reshape it. It has the same chips and sliders as Gradient, and stays editable until Apply.

Layers (Pro)

Open Advanced at the bottom of the card. Every mesh gets a layer stack, like Photoshop, and nothing is destroyed until you flatten.

Layers carry through multi-object Paint sessions. While you paint a layer, the add-on draws the finished composite over the meshes, so you see the result, not just the layer.

Procedural layers (Pro)

In a Paint session, the Procedural layers row adds a layer that is computed rather than painted. Each one stays editable later: select it and press Edit.

Every procedural layer shares these:

Occlusion

Raycast ambient occlusion: creases and contact points get the color.

• Distance — how far each ray looks.
• Rays — more is smoother, fewer is faster.
• Occluded by — All (every painted mesh), Own (each mesh on its own), or Scene (everything visible, painted or not).

Curvature

Colors the sharp edges, the crevices, or both.

• Convex / Concave / Both — edges, cavities, or both.
• Sensitivity — how sharp counts as an edge.
• Smooth — soften the result.

Texture

Any image, read as grayscale: the light parts get the color.

• The image — load one from disk, or step through the images already in the file with ‹ ›.
• View — projected from where you are looking. From View projects again from the current view, and Front faces only keeps it off the back of the mesh.
• Triplanar — projected from all three axes and blended, so every side is covered.
• Scale — how often it repeats. Blend — how sharply the three projections meet (Triplanar).

Light

A directional light around the meshes: lit surfaces get the color, shadowed ones do not.

• Click and drag anywhere in the viewport — the light follows the mouse.
• +X … Down — snap it to an axis.
• Azimuth / Elevation — set it exactly.
• Softness and Rays — crisp or soft shadows.
• Shade by angle — fade with the angle to the light, not just lit or shadowed.
• Shadows from — All, Own, Scene or None.
• Light From View — put the light where you are looking from.

Gradient and Spline layers

The Gradient and Spline tools also come as procedural layers, so a gradient can sit in the stack with its own blend mode and opacity and be edited later.

Preferences

Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Advanced Vertex Color:

Limits worth knowing

• One edition at a time. Basic and Pro cannot be enabled together; the second one declines and says why.
• Layers need Flatten before export — see the tip above.
• Geometry edits end a Paint session's ability to split. Adding or deleting vertices in the paint mesh is refused on Apply; undo the edit or Cancel.
• Very dense meshes make Occlusion and Light slower, as they cast rays per vertex. Lower Rays while you look, raise it for the final.

Troubleshooting

Network use and files written

None. The add-on opens no sockets, sends no telemetry and checks no licence. It writes nothing but its own preferences. Pro's Texture layer reads the image file you pick.

Support

Questions, bug reports and feature requests — join the Tachyon Studio Discord: https://discord.gg/sksWuJRsqS