FW Paint

Open source (MIT) — github.com/nullabork/fw-paint-fabric

Paint with blocks. A client-side mod (Fabric and NeoForge) with four paints — Solid (one block: walls, columns, volumes), Gradient (smooth colour/brightness blends), Noise (natural, blotchy 3D patterns), and Pattern (hand-drawn 2D block grids painted as planes) — driven by Palettes: named, saved block ramps and patterns you build once and reuse everywhere. A Finder tab ranks every block in the game by colour. Any paint works through any placement mode, with or without markers. Placement is the legit, multiplayer-safe way (normal block-place interactions the server validates), so it works on servers.

v2 beta. Palettes replace v1's per-tool block picker. v1 gradient settings are not migrated — build your first palette on the Palette tab and you're going again in a minute.

Quick start

1. Press K → Settings → Paint tool: pick any item (e.g. a stick). The mod is active only while you hold it.
2. On the Palette tab press + Gradient: double-click (or drag) blocks — or the Auto wildcards — into the strip, then Save. Saving makes it the active palette.
3. K lands on the Paint tab: buttons for paint type, placement mode, and the active palette (in-game: V, G, and B).
4. Right-click a block face to paint: a tap places one layer, holding keeps going. The green face tint + arrows preview exactly what the click will grow, and which way.
5. Markers are optional: they bound what you paint and anchor Automatic segments.
6. Lost? The Help tab is a drill-down in-game manual, always showing your current keybinds.

Keybinds

• K — open / close the FW Paint screen (lands on the Paint quick-controls tab)
• V — switch paint type (Gradient / Noise / Solid / Pattern) · B — cycle the active palette or pattern (whichever the paint type uses)
• G — cycle placement mode: Marker → Marker corners → Marker draw → Single → Face → Face perp → 3D Fill → Disabled
• L-Ctrl (hold + click) — a marker-removing click clears the whole connected plane
• All rebindable under Options → Controls → Key Binds → MISC.

Palettes

One palette drives both gradient and noise painting. The Palette tab lists every palette you've saved — name, its segment sprites, an expandable summary, and a red border when its blocks aren't in your inventory (by default painting refuses then; a Settings toggle can skip the missing segments instead). Use / Edit / Delete above the list; the HUD shows the active palette and B cycles them in-game.

The editor: two live previews on top (a gradient cylinder and a noise cube, each expandable), your colour-sorted inventory blocks in the middle, and the segment strip on the right:

• Double-click or drag blocks into the strip; drag a segment up/down to reorder, sideways out to remove; drag the pointed stop handles to resize segments — placement uses exactly the shares you drew (the Curve turns Custom).
• Order and Curve icon-buttons above the strip: sort by colour or brightness (asc/desc), pick an easing (Linear / Ease In / Ease Out / Ease In-Out / Step) — or shape your own by hand.
• Auto segments — the crosshatched wildcards: Auto colour and Auto brightness resolve to a real inventory block when you paint, deterministically: at the strip's start they read the block you started on; at the end they scan to an end marker or the first solid block — and if there's nothing to find, they pick the opposite of your start (lightest↔darkest for brightness, the furthest colour for colour) so you still get a full ramp. A strip of nothing but Autos is a reusable "gradient from whatever I'm standing on". Right-click a block in the list to ban it from Auto picks.
• Sizing: Min blocks (shortest run that fits the ratios), Fill space (out to the end marker / first block), or Set steps (fixed length).
• Variation (a ±1–±3 colour-neighbour window + a swap chance — cells shimmer to nearby colours from your inventory), Chaos (repeat/skip dither), Step length (steps randomly run longer/shorter) — plus the palette's own noise type / scale / seed.
• Hover any control (or click its circled-?) for help describing what it's currently set to.

Patterns

Draw a block grid by hand (up to 32×32) and paint it as a plane. + Pattern on the Palette tab opens the editor: left-click a block (its sprite rides your cursor), hold and scrub to draw — press a same-block cell to erase, Shift-drag for straight/45° lines, right-click to flood fill, middle-click to eyedrop, Ctrl-click to set where placement starts (empty cells are holes). A live iso preview (expandable) shows the wall, variance included; Start: Top/Bottom keeps ground-up painting upright. Painting advances out of the clicked face, the width crossing a plane snapped from your facing (45°/90°) — adjacent strokes continue the drawing instead of restarting, so you can build a patterned wall column by column. Tiling: none / sides / start–end / both. Patterns are their own paint type — B cycles your patterns while it's active.

Placement modes

Where blocks go, shared by all three paints. The green face tint + arrow previews every face the next click grows from, and rides the advancing fronts while you hold.

• Single — one column out of the clicked face; re-clicking continues from its first air gap.
• Face — the whole connected plane extrudes together: click a wall's top to raise it, its side to thicken it. A start marker behind the clicked column selects the connected marker group instead. Fill voids first (Settings) levels the lowest columns before stacking new layers.
• Face perp — a 1-block-wide run through the clicked block crossing your view (perpendicular to your look), snapped to 45° or 90° (the Perp snap setting) — diagonal stair-stepped lines included. Inside markers only the marked blocks along the run are selected.
• 3D Fill — a connected blob out of the clicked face; tap for the first shell, hold to grow. Contained by walls, end markers, and start-marker space.
• Everywhere: an end marker stops a column or fill even floating in air, and a finished column never resumes past it.

Markers

Turquoise starts and amber ends aim and bound every tool. They aren't real blocks: every marker mode reaches to the Marker dist setting, far beyond block reach. Saved per world and dimension; Clear Markers (Settings) wipes them.

• Marker — left-click starts, right-click ends; click-drag for straight axis-locked lines; starting on a marked block removes instead.
• Marker corners — two clicks mark a volume: left-click one corner (its face sets the column direction, a thin box follows your aim), right-click the opposite — starts fill one plane, ends the other. With Auto end on, columns hug the terrain and empty columns are skipped.
• Marker draw — a freehand pencil: sweep to spatter starts over whatever the crosshair touches, right-click for ends (auto ends scan along the stroke's starting face).
• Clicking a marked block toggles it off in any marker mode; Ctrl clears its connected plane.
• Auto end marker (Settings) — each start scans out from the clicked face and marks the first non-air block (all air → max distance), with a blue face + arrow preview.

Gradient painting

The active palette blended along your build — between markers or free-hand.

• Between markers: mark a start and end, click the face the line runs out of and hold — the palette stretches start→end, Automatic segments anchoring to the real marker blocks.
• Anywhere else: the gradient grows out of the clicked face, sized by the palette's Sizing mode. Paint memory continues a half-finished gradient when re-clicked (cleared when you switch or edit palettes, or after the Settings idle timer); a finished gradient starts a fresh one on top.
• 3D gradients: sphere-ish blends from the centre out; each fill remembers its centre. 3D needs the strip to end in a real block (Auto at the start is fine).
• Honest ramps: running out of a palette block stops the paint with an "out of X" message — no silent substitutions.

Noise painting

A seedable 3D noise field: valleys get the top of your palette's strip, peaks the bottom — with the palette's noise type (Smooth / Perlin / Fractal), per-axis Scale, and Seed.

• Region fill: bound a region with start/end marker pairs, switch to 3D Fill, right-click an empty spot inside — the whole region floods at once. Or paint anywhere: Single / Face / 3D.
• The editor's noise cube previews it at real world coordinates starting at your feet — exactly what painting that spot would place. Drag a face to pan.

Solid tool

One kind of block through any mode. Left-click a block in the list to select it (again to clear), right-click to exclude it from the closest-match modes; the big preview shows your pick (or a ? when the mode decides at click time). Match: Selected block, Exact block (copies the clicked block), Closest colour / brightness (nearest inventory match, measured as the eye sees it — Oklab).

Finder tab

Every placeable block in the game ranked by colour — discover blocks beyond your inventory.

• Sort: Color — a rainbow (grays dark→light, then hue families) — or Brightness.
• Click a block to centre it among its nearest colour neighbours, or pick a pure colour in the hue/saturation field (+ brightness slider) — a coloured marker line shows where it falls. The target button re-centres after scrolling.
• Colours come from each block's actual textures — resource packs included.

Settings

• Placement, Marker dist, Auto end marker, Fill voids first, Paint memory — see above. Missing blocks: refuse to paint or skip absent segments. Color match: Perceptual (Oklab) or Classic.
• Move helper text… repositions the HUD lines with a live preview.

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2 · Java 25 · pick your loader's file:
  • Fabric — Fabric Loader 0.19.3+ and Fabric API for 26.2
  • NeoForge — no other dependency
• Client-side only — nothing to install on the server.
• Placement sends normal "use block" interactions the server validates (Litematica-style); an aggressive anti-cheat may rate-limit very fast fills.

Open source (MIT) — github.com/nullabork/fw-paint-fabric