Blend (Material)

Owned by Alice Hinton-Jones (Deactivated)
Feb 26, 2021
2 min read

The inputs of Blend (Material) (left) and the blending result as seen when mapped to a mesh (right).

Description

The Blend (Material) node performs a Normal-mode blend between two Material inputs. The Foreground input overrides the Background input. An optional grayscale Mask input can be used to constrain the blending to a specific area.

The Opacity property lets you control the overall visibility of the Foreground input over the Background.

If a map is present in one Material, but not the other, the node adds that map type to the output with the information from the Material that has it.

Usage

Follow these steps to blend two Materials using the Blend (Material) node.

  1. Ensure that the Materials you want to blend are on your Node Graph.
  2. Create a new Blend (Material) node on the graph. It can be found under the Composition category in the Node Library.
  3. Connect the Material you wish to use as the Foreground into the corresponding input port, and the other Material into the Background port.
  4. (Optional) Connect a grayscale mask into the Mask input port if you wish to perform blend in a specific area. You can create this mask using the Mask Paint node, the Gradient node, or from an imported asset.
  5. View the blend results by bringing the Blend (Material) node into the 2D and/or 3D Viewports.

Node Reference


Node categoryComposition
Node execution styleAutomatic

Ports

Input NameInput TypeDescription
ForegroundMaterial

The Material you wish to blend as the Foreground layer.

BackgroundMaterial

The Material you wish to blend as the Background layer.

(Optional) Mask

Bitmap (Mask)

An optional grayscale mask, where white indicates the specific areas where blending should occur.

Output TypeDescription
Bitmap / Material

The blended Material, or the individual Bitmaps that make up this Material. The number and type of Bitmap outputs depends on the maps used in both of the input Materials.

Properties

Property/SettingDescription

Output Type

Choose between Bitmap and Material to determine whether the node outputs the entire blended Material, or its individual Bitmaps. The number and type of Bitmap outputs depends on the maps used in both of the input Materials.

Opacity

The overall opacity of the Foreground Material blended on top of the Background Material, as a value between 0 and 100.