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Changelog

User-facing highlights, newest first. The add-on follows MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning.

2.5.0

  • Per-object Material Looks. Palette colours now become real materials, per object. Pick a colour or gradient and render it as one of six looks — Toon, Flat, Plastic, Glossy, Metal, Glass — that keep the exact palette hue while showing the model's 3D form. Flat and Toon stay lighting-independent (the old Shadeless mode's exact colour), while Plastic, Glossy, Metal and Glass add believable PBR shading. Looks live in native material slots, so different objects — and different faces — can carry different looks and colours at once. Each look has tunable parameters (metallic, roughness, highlight, coat, IOR, transmission, Toon bands) plus optional procedural roughness/bump channels. Sidebar ▸ Gradient Tools ▸ Material Look.
  • Apply a look to Whole Object, Painted Element, or Selected Faces. Choose the scope — a look change updates the shading and keeps the object's own palette colours.
  • Material Look presets — a shareable library. Save, apply, import and export looks as JSON (full fidelity, including procedural channels), with a searchable picker and 5 built-ins (Chrome, Clay, Frosted Glass, Cel Toon, Matte Plastic).
  • Copy, Link & Eyedropper looks across objects. Copy the active look onto other objects (each keeps its own colours), link objects to share one material (edit one → all update), or eyedrop a look straight from an object in the viewport.
  • Switch an object's palette in one click. Re-point an object to a different palette while keeping its tuned look — no more deleting and re-assigning materials. The Apply & Export button now adapts: Set Up Object → Refresh Material → Switch to '{palette}'.
  • Dedicated Color Management panel. View Transform, Look and Exposure in one place, with a one-click reset to Standard (best for exact Flat/Toon colour). Sidebar ▸ Gradient Tools ▸ Color Management.
  • Cleaner strip picker. The strip selector in UV Tools and Curve Gradient is now a read-only picker showing each strip's real colour or gradient (no accidental edits; the full editor stays in the Strips panel). Switch between Grid and List in Preferences. UV Tools now also offers "Assign to Active" for flat colours, not just gradients.
  • The Material Look panel follows your selection. Select an object (or faces) with a single look and its parameters become editable immediately — no dropdown hunting. Toggle in Preferences.
  • Your old files just work. .blend files made with the previous Shadeless mode migrate automatically to the Flat look on open — no manual steps, no data loss.
  • Rock-solid. Shipped after four adversarial QA rounds: crash-free live editing, correct per-object colour/look behaviour, honest UI states, and unique palette/strip names.

2.4.12 – 2.4.16

  • Smooth, crash-free real-time editing. Editing a gradient's stops — or dragging a flat strip color — on objects that already have the material applied is now fluid and stable. The earlier viewport slow-down, and the crash while dragging stops, are both fixed.
  • New "Live update while editing gradients" toggle (Preferences ▸ Performance) lets you turn off the live texture refresh while tweaking a gradient and update it manually instead.

2.4.11

  • Follows Blender's language. The on-screen shortcut HUD and paint messages are now in English by default and switch to Spanish automatically when Blender's interface language is set to Spanish (with interface translation enabled).

2.4.10

  • Invert an applied gradient & Paint mirror modes. Flip a gradient that's already painted onto the selected faces — no need to repaint — and use new mirror modes while painting (toggle with M).

2.4.9

  • Clearer Radial preview. The Radial tool's live preview now shows the intermediate gradient stops, not just the end colors, so the preview matches the final result.

2.4.8

  • White until painted. Assigning the material now leaves the object blank — color appears only where you actually paint, instead of pre-filling the whole mesh.

2.4.7

  • Face tools live in UV Tools. The face select/retarget tools moved into the UV Tools panel, with a clearer layout (target strip → tool tabs → options).

2.4.6

  • Invert toggle for axis Project, plus stricter locks — a locked strip now blocks all edits (color, move and delete).

2.4.5

  • Fixed the freehand Paint preview: it now shows one dot per gradient stop rather than per sampled point.

2.4.4

  • Real-time, Krita-style smoothing for the freehand Paint stroke.

2.4.3

  • Palette textures are now auto-packed into the .blend on save, so your palettes travel with the file.

2.4.2

  • New palettes start empty. A freshly created palette now has no default colors — every cell is a blank slot, so you begin from a clean sheet.

2.4.1

  • Bundled the full GPL-3.0 license and added per-file copyright headers. No functional changes.

2.4.0

  • Quick Start can be dismissed from its own block (with a confirmation), and re-enabled any time in Preferences.
  • Default texture size on create & import — new palettes, loaded presets and imported files all adopt your preferred size from Preferences. Exported .json palettes still restore their own saved size.

2.3.x

  • 2.3.4 / 2.3.3 — Fixed Browse / Load Preset and import/export in empty projects, and restored the searchable preset picker.
  • 2.3.2 — Decluttered the panels: split palette config, design and actions, and surfaced a prominent Assign Material button.
  • 2.3.1 — Clearer, more predictable Project mode with Top / Front / Side axis projection that preserves the object's silhouette.
  • 2.3.0 — Built-in system presets (Flat Colors, Grayscale), a searchable palette browser, and a documentation link.

2.2.0

  • Renamed to Gradient Tools.
  • Added Shadeless / VFX mode — pure, lighting-independent color for exact client palettes.

2.1.x

  • Professional Image / UV Editor parity — the Eyedropper, the texture grid overlay, mirrored panels, and the faces ↔ strip tools (Pick Strip, Select Faces by Strip, Move Faces to Strip).
  • Adjustable overlay label size; explicit preset selection with active-strip previews.

2.0.x

  • A major usability pass: "just as powerful, far easier to understand."
  • Per-axis orthographic projection (X/Y/Z) that keeps the silhouette, the View Silhouette option for Paint ▸ Drag, gradient invert (F), a surface-visibility toggle and an on-screen shortcut HUD.
  • Robust, artifact-free gradient projection on dense and irregular meshes.

1.x — foundations

The 1.x series established the core: the palette grid and Flat/Gradient strips, the four painting tools, Bake to Vertex Colors, per-palette color space, universal palette import (JSON / ASE / GPL / PAL / TXT / HEX), multi-object material assignment, and the consolidated preferences.

Info

For the complete, detailed change history, see the development changelog that ships with the add-on source.