2. Installing and navigating around¶
Requirements. Blender 4.5 or newer – be careful on 5.0. it works but due to blender bugs we cannot fix, it crashes, a lot, if you can update to atleast 5.1. The GPU baker that accelerates procedural bakes and UV transfers ships as a Windows executable, so on other platforms Overpaint falls back to Blender's own Cycles baking for those steps (everything works, some steps are slower and, for UV transfers, less exact, and this guide will be updated when ports are done to apple silicon and linux - they are comming).
GPU backend: Vulkan. On Windows and Linux use Blender's Vulkan backend. If OP Painter shows Switch to Vulkan, press it and restart Blender (the button saves the preference for you). You can also change it in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ System ▸ Display ▸ Backend. OpenGL has a texture limit that larger stacks hit, see the troubleshooting chapter.
Installing. Overpaint ships as a Blender extension zip. In Blender open Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions, use the drop-down arrow at the top right, choose Install from Disk… and pick the zip. The zip contains the addon, its asset library (generators, filters and shaders) and the GPU baker (that executable).
Where things are. Open the sidebar with N. OP Painter is where you work, OP Settings holds the global stuff.
The four buttons at the top open what you need beside the viewport: Library, Inspector, Brush, Export (chapter 3). Material and Object Sets are optional, you can start with one material and leave them collapsed.
If the panel says Overpaint Library missing - reinstall, install the complete extension zip again (it includes the generators, filters and shaders).