Painting

Continuous multi-channel material painting, native channel and mask brushes, editable strokes, alphas and painting across texture sets.

On this page 6 sections

Use Paint Material for continuous strokes across enabled PBR channels, or Paint Channel Brush for Blender's native tools on one channel or a painted mask. Material strokes remain editable records and can re-render at another texture resolution.

Paint Material

Select a paint layer. The Inspector names the destination and shows its channel toggles.
Open Paint Material, enable the channels to paint and set their values. Color, Roughness, Metallic and Height are prominent; additional channels are under Stroke Details.
Set radius, hardness, opacity, flow and spacing, then click Paint Material and drag on an assigned surface. The material updates while the pointer moves.
Release to commit one gesture as one undo step. Esc discards the current gesture; when idle it exits painting. Saving during a gesture commits it once.

Fast drags are resampled at brush spacing and projected back onto the surface. A miss, silhouette edge, hidden object or unassigned slot lifts the brush. Changing or deleting the target during a gesture discards that gesture with a reason. Black and scalar zero are valid paint.

Control	Behaviour
Pressure Size / Pressure Flow	Independent pressure responses for radius and flow. Tablet pressure and tilt have synthetic-input coverage; physical tablet validation remains outstanding.
Reach: Surface	Default. Paints the hit surface and connected surface that does not turn away from the stamp. Disconnected pieces, nearby sheets and neighbouring objects stay clean.
Reach: Depth Band	Paints surfaces within Depth Limit × radius. Older strokes keep this broader behaviour.
Depth Limit	Restricts projection depth; exposed under Stroke Details.
Alpha / Paint or Erase	An image shapes the stroke; erase removes its contribution.

Painting one channel or a mask

Select a paint layer or painted mask. Choose Paint Channel for a layer.
Open Paint Channel Brush and click Paint, or use Paint Mask in the mask Inspector.
Use Blender's native brush selector, pressure, spacing, stencils, clone, smear, soften or sharpen tools.
Click Finish when done. Selecting a fill, folder or non-painted mask also ends this session.

The native brush edits one image channel at a time. The live material samples that canvas; expensive dependent effects can catch up after the stroke. 3D painting temporarily protects slots outside the set with a face-selection mask and restores the prior selection when done. In 2D, painting edits the source image; a composite is a separate snapshot that needs refreshing after edits. Finishing switches to view mode. Save and export flush pending changes; use Refresh for externally edited textures.

Brushes and alphas

Brush controls include color or scalar value, size, strength, spacing, erase and alpha. The Brushes shelf category activates a native brush. Import Alpha packs a grayscale image into the project; Clear Alpha or No Alpha removes it. Bundled brushes are copied to local brush assets so imported textures persist. Painted masks offer Black · Hide and White · Reveal. Use Add Paint to Mask to correct a procedural mask without replacing it.

Editable vector strokes

Material painting records surface samples, brush settings, channel values and pressure. Under Stamps and Stroke Details, use the stroke list to edit radius, hardness, flow, projection, alpha or values; reorder, duplicate or delete strokes. Rasterize converts them to paint images, and Purge Orphans removes records no layer renders. Native pixel paint remains underneath the stroke contribution. A Vector Strokes mask can render strokes as coverage.

Strokes cross UV seams and re-render at the set's chosen output resolution. They retain their recorded scope and reach after undo, reload or resolution changes. Copies receive independent stroke records. Current smart-material export includes the relevant strokes and packed brush alphas; their spatial placement still needs checking on a different asset.

Painting across texture sets

Material strokes target only the selected set by default. Enable Paint Across Sets to see the allowed sets; only sets actually crossed by the pointer receive a linked paint layer and the shared gesture. A later stroke with this switch off stays in its selected set, even if an earlier gesture linked other sets.

Blender's native brush also supports Paint Across Sets through material paint mode with one canvas per set. Every set paints the same channel; undo and UV seam padding remain image-based.

Material Stamp

Material Stamp (4 Channels), under Stamps and Stroke Details, places one discrete stamp with a chosen radius, hardness and channel values. A click is one undo step; Escape cancels placement.

Reference: 0.13.0 painting workflows and measured limits.