In this short Blender 4.5 tutorial, we’ll see how to display Vertex Colors on objects both in Solid mode in the 3D Viewport and in Rendering.
Video Transcript
Hello everyone! In this short Blender 4.5 tutorial, we’ll see how to display Vertex Colors on objects both in Solid mode in the 3D Viewport and in Rendering.
In the scene I’m using for this example, there are several separate objects, each with its own Vertex Colors. We can view these colors if we select the individual objects and switch to Vertex Color mode. However, we can’t see the colors for all the objects at the same time, even if we select them all with the A key and switch to Vertex Color mode. In that case, we’ll only see them for the active object.
To solve this problem in Solid Viewport mode, we need to open the Viewport Shading menu and select Attribute as the option for Material Color.
When we create Vertex Colors for objects, Blender automatically generates an Attribute, which we can also identify when we have an object selected in Vertex Paint mode.
This and other Attributes are also visible in the Attributes section of the Object Data tab for the selected object.
However, if we now switch to Rendered mode, we still won’t see the Vertex Colors of the objects.
To retrieve those colors and use them in rendering, either directly or by mixing them with other Material nodes, the first thing we need to do is assign a base Material to an object. Meanwhile, I’ll switch to Shading view so we have both a Material node editor and a Rendered preview of the 3D view available.
I’ll now add a Color Attribute node to the node setup and specify the Attribute created by Blender in the corresponding field. The output of this node is of type Color, but I can still connect it directly to the Shader input of the Material Output and get a flat color on the object.
Alternatively, I can connect it to the Base Color input of a Principled node, or any other shader, to start with the manually assigned base color and then create additional effects with the various Shading nodes that Blender provides.
Before wrapping up the tutorial, let me also show you how to assign this Material to all the other objects in the scene in one go. I’ll select all the objects, then select the one with the Material last, using SHIFT and click, to make it the active object. Then I’ll press CTRL L and choose Material from the Link Data menu that appears.
All the objects will now share the same Material, so changing one parameter will affect them all. If you want to create a separate Material for a selected object, click on the New Material icon in the Material tab, as I’m showing on screen. At that point, the object will have its own new Material, initially identical to the previous one, but you’ll be able to edit it without affecting the others, and vice versa.
Alright, that’s it for this tutorial! If you found it useful, you can thank me with a Like and by subscribing to the channel! Don’t forget to turn on notifications so you won’t miss the next tutorials. See you soon!