A Tale of Two Fill Effects (or: why are these different)

ryebot

I have two fill effects applied to fill layers behaving differently in Painter, and I'm totally confused as to why.

Fill layer #1

There's a smart material in the Painter shelf called "Plastic Hexagon" or something like that. It's a Base Color fill with a fill effect applied to the layer. The fill effect contains a height and base color channel, is set to overlay at 20%. The opacity of the fill effect changes when I adjust this slider.

Fill Layer #2

I tried to recreate the effect on another layer (I wanted to make something like frosted glass.), so I tried to replicate the effect from the smart material.

• I created a fill layer
• I added a fill effect with base color and height channels

But wait! This fill layer has different inputs options for the height and base color channels. Also, changing the opacity or blending mode also has no effect on the intensity of the effect. This is not expected behavior, based on the other fill effect.



Why doesn't this fill effect behave like the other one? It's driving me nuts.

Bek

You've added 3D Perlin noise (Which uses the Position map, which is why it's appearing under the Image Inputs) to the second fill; click the X to get rid of it. The opacity (unless it's a mask) will be dependent/unique on the currently active channel, which in your pictures is Base Colour (The dropdown menu at the top of you layer stack).

ryebot

Hmm, it looks like the noise requires the position map to generate - it disappears if I remove the position map.

I did not know that about effects adjustments only affecting the active channel. That makes a lot of sense! Thanks @Bek!

There is so much about painter I still don't understand.

Bek

I mean click the X to get rid of the 3D noise; but if you specifically want 3d noise then yes it requires the position map. Different inputs might have different options; it depends what was exposed in the source substance designer graph. So the options aren't part of the fill, but part what you've plugged into the fill.