Paint — Drag & Freehand

Best for: free-form directional gradients — draw the flow by hand.

Paint lets you lay a gradient in any direction you like, either by dragging a straight line or by drawing a freehand stroke. A live ribbon preview follows your cursor the whole time.

Drag (straight gradient)

The default mode. Click and drag a line; the gradient runs along it.

1. Edit Mode (Tab) → select the faces to paint.
2. UV Tools ▸ Paint tab → pick a Target strip.
3. Click Activate Drag Tool.
4. Click + drag across the faces to set the gradient's start, end and direction.
5. Release → the UVs are applied.

While dragging you'll see:

• a gradient bar along the drag direction,
• colored balls for each color stop, and
• endpoint balls showing the start and end color.

Projection: Along Drag vs. View Silhouette

Mode	What it does
Along Drag	Classic 1-D projection — the gradient runs along the drag and is centered across its width.
View Silhouette	Projects from the current viewport: the drag sets the gradient direction, while the on-screen silhouette is preserved across the perpendicular axis.

Freehand stroke

Tick Freehand Stroke to draw a flowing path by hand instead of a straight line. The gradient follows the shape of your stroke and is smoothed in real time as you draw (Krita-style stabilisation), then refined on release — ideal for organic surfaces. The live preview shows one dot per gradient color stop, so what you see on screen is exactly what lands on the mesh.

1. Enable Freehand Stroke in the Paint tab.
2. Activate Drag Tool, then draw your stroke across the faces.
3. Release → the stroke is smoothed and the gradient applied.

Handy keys

Key	Action
F	Invert the gradient (even mid-drag)
M	Cycle mirror modes — lay the gradient mirrored across an axis for symmetrical results
Esc / right-click	Cancel

Tip

Use Drag for clean linear ramps (a sky, a metal sweep) and Freehand when the color flow needs to bend with the form (hair, fabric, a creature's back).