Giving your 3D models a hand-painted look can add a lot of personality, but if you’ve tried it before, you know achieving that effect manually often takes hours of work.
Today we’re taking a look at Painterly Add-on for Cycles and EEVEE Next, developed by Patrick Daugherty. This add-on was first released a few months ago and has just received a major update.
Painterly is designed to make the process of creating hand-painted effects inside Blender fast and intuitive. It allows artists to generate stylized Bezier curve strokes with built-in textures that emulate traditional brushwork, letting you add expressive surface details without leaving the 3D viewport.
Main Features
- Painterly Stroke System
Instantly create painterly Bezier curve strokes with over a hundred unique textures and brush types, designed to emulate traditional hand-painted materials.
- Texture Mode
Automatically generates diffuse and normal maps for any UV-mapped object, giving surfaces a painted appearance without manual texturing.
- Viewport Integration
Fully integrated into Blender’s viewport, allowing real-time preview and direct adjustments while working in either Cycles or EEVEE Next.
- Customizable Controls
Offers a wide range of parameters to refine brush density, size, color variation, and stroke behavior for personalized visual results.
It is also worth mentioning that Stroke Pen mode renders in Cycles (2.93+) and EEVEE Next 4.2+ only, and Geometry Nodes mode requires Blender 4.0+.
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New Update Features
As said before, this tool received a major October update that introduces several new features and performance improvements.
- Painterly Texture Mode in v2.5
Completely revamped processing system, that claims up to 10x faster normal-map generation, improved efficiency, and a visible progress display for texture baking.
- Geometry Node Mode
Newly introduced mode for multi-stroke instancing, enabling complex layered brush effects that remain efficient even on dense models.
- Expanded Stroke Library
Adds new “body part” brushes such as eyes, limbs, and mouths, designed to quickly stylize or bring character to any object using the Bezier stroke tool.
- Enhanced Realtime Feedback
The Texture Mode now provides clear visual feedback during processing, making it easier to manage color and normal map passes simultaneously.
We recommend checking the original documentation if you want to learn more about the tool, its compatibility, or usage.
Other Alternatives
If you are looking for alternatives to this add-on, there are a few that may cover part of its functionality.
- Brushstroke Tools (by Blender Studio): Geometry-Nodes–based brushstroke system for Blender 4.2+. Draw or fill procedural 3D strokes directly on meshes, layer them, and tweak density/width/variation; works in EEVEE/Cycles.
Differs from Painterly: focuses on geometry-based stroke placement and material controls rather than auto-generating diffuse/normal maps. Pair it with a layer-painting tool if you need that (e.g. Ucupaint).
- Layer Painter (by Joshua Knauber): Layer-based material/texture painting inside Blender with masks, filters, and PBR-friendly stacks. Great when you want Substance-style layering without leaving Blender.
Differs from Painterly: focuses on layer stacks and mask workflows rather than preset painterly strokes; better for hybrid PBR + stylized pipelines.
- Deep Paint (by Gaku Tada): Grease Pencil–centric NPR add-on aimed at watercolor/painted looks, with tools to convert GP strokes to 3D meshes, custom brushes, and NPR presets.
Differs from Painterly: leans into Grease Pencil NPR workflows and stroke-to-mesh tricks; more “watercolor drawing” than Bézier-stroke texture authoring.
- Painterly Shader (node group): A node-based painterly shader that auto-adds a painted look driven by sculpt/geometry detail, with many parameters.
Differs from Painterly: no add-on UI or stroke library; it’s a shader node setup you drop on meshes for a quick painterly material.
✨ The Painterly Add-On is available on Gumroad and SuperHive.
📘 Want to build your own Blender tools? Check out Blender Tool Development Fundamentals, a complete guide to creating custom operators, UI extensions, gizmos, and Qt widgets for advanced add-on development.
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