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I have been analyzing the whole day, should I use vertex paint or a texture atlas to paint all my models in blender for my diploma thesis I am currently working on (procedural generation of a city made in low poly (painting faces with solid colors)), when I finally decided to go with vertex paint after all, because it might be a better option due to slight optimization reasons (no textures needed).

When finally I start painting my models, when I realize I can't find any way to simply repaint already colored faces with slightly different hue of color. Nothing pops up on google. Please, if anybody knows how (if) this is achievable, please help me out.

This is an example what I will be painting

This is an example what I will be painting. I have already painted a lot of my objects using multiple materials (a while ago, when i did not know about draw calls so much), so I have all the materials assigned with colors I want on my objects, maybe UV texturing is the way to go, because I can somehow select the faces with already assigned material and just drop them on appropriate color in texture?

[EDIT]:

I have gone to UV mapping due to the reason it seems way faster to alter color of already colored faces rather than using vertex paint. See the work in progress below.

enter image description here

Hiti3
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  • Maybe this can help somehow https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/84718/color-all-of-my-models-using-one-texture/84720#84720 – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 28 '17 at 17:50
  • Thanks mate but I'm way past the knowledge offered there. That is my second option to go with a texture atlas. – Hiti3 Jul 28 '17 at 18:01
  • Texture Paint which requires a UV Map. Texture Paint can paint on particular faces. Possibly onto a second image. Blend texture if necessary. Please specify Cycles Render or Blender Render or other. Please include another screen capture to show your technical requirements of painting. Show some finished product. – atomicbezierslinger Jul 28 '17 at 18:46
  • Can you explain what you mean by Vertex Paint ? Just to make sure we are on the same page. A concern about optimization seems premature. Why the concern? How many flat colors? A suggestion is to be willing to use other features of Blender. Learning a new feature will save you time in the long run. (Yes Blender is time consuming) There are tutorials to UV map and manipulate the UV on the website that rhymes with noonoob. – atomicbezierslinger Jul 28 '17 at 19:10
  • Vertex paint as in vertex coloring.. Front hand optimization is never a premature caution, quite the opposite it's good design pattern, so you evolve your feature around a good solution not port it to one if you want an efficient solution. I have discarded the vertex paint solution for painting as I still have not got an answer to what I was asking for. Apparently there is no feature in Blender to achieve repainting of already colored faces without selecting all the faces again. I have gone to UV mapping because simply put it saves a lot of my time. Making one big atlas texture will do. – Hiti3 Jul 29 '17 at 11:23
  • Is one vertex color (new one) for one mesh a desired goal for you? You can use Select Linked geometry operator (Ctrl+L) in Vertex Paint mode to quickly select linked meshes, then enable Face Selection Masking and use Paint > Set Vertex Colors (Shift+K) to change vertex color for all the selected vertices (color must be choosed before that in the options of the brush) – Mr Zak Jul 29 '17 at 11:40
  • This is not an option, I have lots of meshes and picking each and every mesh even with the select linked geometry operation is time consuming because the topology of some meshes are merged with the bases of the buildings and that means some more editing in selection before I get my group of faces I want to change color (the topology could be better, I am using Blender for the first time so I am still learning on my mistakes). With the UV mapping procedure I just simply select all the unwrapped faces of the mesh on top of a certain color and move it to desired one. – Hiti3 Jul 29 '17 at 12:16
  • Yes then this is not an option and likely vertex paint in general as well. – Mr Zak Jul 29 '17 at 13:58

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I personally hate the built-in painting tool in Blender. It works fine for planes, but on more complex 3D meshes it fails badly.

If you insist on painting the faces a solid color, you can change to face select in painting mode, so you can select the faces you want to apply color to. This is a quick way of doing what you want, but you have to go over every face in every angle to get a clean solid color on your mesh. Leave a comment below if you want screenshots of how to do this.

Alternatively, you can also use the fill tool on the selected faces to make quick work of the repainting process.

A plugin that I myself have not tested yet, is this one. It allows you to select all faces with the same color automatically for easier repainting.

I personally use UV textures for pretty much everything that's textured. If I use the built-in painting tool, it's simply to mark which faces are what in a solid color, so I can easily recognize it later in external editing.

Hope this helps.

FreemoX
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  • Thanks, but I am using it this way now and this doesn't answer my problem, because I dont know how to repaint some faces I found out to be better looking off with a different hue of color and I do not want to choose all the faces again, I just want to select the color that paints all the vertices and change it. – Hiti3 Jul 28 '17 at 18:00
  • In that case, how about trying out this addon? I haven't tried it myself, but it sounds like it would do the trick for you. Might actually download this myself when I get back on my main computer. https://gist.github.com/tamask/2590850 – FreemoX Jul 28 '17 at 18:35
  • Have not tried it because I switched to UV mapping already, a faster solution for me atm, but thank you for posting this, try putting it in your answer which I have marked as best, so others who bear same problem easily find it. – Hiti3 Jul 29 '17 at 11:30
  • Will do, and glad you found the information useful to some degree. – FreemoX Jul 29 '17 at 11:32