Similar to the max standard modifier "Vertex Paint", the vertex paint
tool has some advantages above this - especially the feature, that you
can paint many vertices at once, and you can have a smooth paint border
and stylus support.
If you press shift or ctrl, you may pick the color from another or the
same mesh.With shift, you pick an average color of all vertices inside
the radius of the paint tool. This is a bit slower than the
original vertex paint modifier. With ctrl, you pick the color in the
center ot the radius.
This tool is also available as a standalone modifier named "VertPaint".
Channel: Vertex color channel. Channel 0 is the default vertex channel usually used for vertex color. But for special purposes, you can use all other mapping channels too. The VCol checkbox of the selection panel, which switches vertex color on and off, always refers to this channel.
Filter R/G/B: This can filter the used vertex color to selected color channels, while other colors floating up the stack are left untouched. This is extremely useful if you have to work on color channels separately, e.g. if you are working on a realtime export scene, where landscape materials are determined by vertex color channels (green=grass, red=earth, blue=water). In the Vertex Rollout, there's an example described for this.
Color: Your paint color, like in the original Vertex Paint
Modifier
Opacity: The paint opacity, like in the original Vertex
Paint Modifier
Smoothing group borders: If you check this, Vertex paint
is only applied to the faces with the same smoothing group the cursor
center is on.
Color Palette: A color palette like in the original Vertex
Paint modifier. The color palette is saved and you can explicitly save
it to a file.
"Gr" Button: Sets a greyscale palette
"R" Button: Sets a red palette
"G" Button: Sets a green palette
"B" Button: Sets a blue palette
"C" Button: Sets a mixed colors palette (same colors like
in the original vertex paint)
"Save" Icon: Saves the actual palette to a file. The file
format is the same as the color clipboard files (*.ccb), except that 16
colors are saved instead of 12. Nevertheless you may load ccb files
created from Vertex Paint into Color clipboard and vice versa, but in
that case, only 12 colors are loaded.
"Load" Icon: Loads a .ccb file into the current palette.