Question about blending materials.

Panupat

I'm studying how to make seamless textures for  a ground plane in Substance Designer.

My reference - https://imgur.com/a/j2FhLKs

So my question is about the placement of the pebbles. I want to be able to control pebble placement on each ground geo outside of Substance either by mask texture or vertex color.  However, the transition, I want the pebbles to retain their shapes/outline instead of them blurring into the ground. In UE4 there seem to be a node specifically for this  but I need to do this in Maya/Redshift.

Any advise appreciate. Thanks everyone.

throttlekitty

Sorry, I don't understand the problem. Can you re-word what you're asking for?

Eric Chadwick

They want to do heightmap-based blending, using Redshift in Maya.

Some tips here. Not specifically for that combo, but might give you ideas to start experimenting with.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture#Modulation_Blending

Panupat

Thanks. So that's what its called, I'll do some more searching.

Panupat

The only resource that I could find. Still having a hard time trying to understand the idea behind it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFZo-q2-EZo

UE4 already have the node pre-built but I'd like to know the inner workings of it. Is it possible to dive deeper into UE4 nodes similar to what you can do in Designer?

I remember seeing a video on how to construct the shader manually back in Unreal Engine 2 but I can't find that video anymore. Anyone remember anything like that? I vaguely remember it was about painting moss on a brick wall (or a brick well)

Panupat

Finding more results now that I remembered it was called UDK back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E72ZLtbTXD8

Panupat

I think I found the one I was talking about.

https://youtu.be/iS8wLVOJuUA

throttlekitty

Right. The 'not blurring them into the ground' thing really threw me off for some reason. Hope this helps.

This first video describes blending two materials using the RS Material Blender based on two material heights + a mask. At 2:00 he starts with a Ramp to do a simple blend from left to right. Instead of a ramp, this is where your own mask or vertex colors would be. Even if you're not using displacement, you'll want to have a mask that defines the shape of your pebbles. In addition to the blendColor node he uses here, there's also layeredTexture, which features a number of blending modes, like add or subtract.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g0NJnsI4fE

Next up is the Redshift Documentation for rsVertexColor, which has a nice little primer at the bottom. Using a single R, G or B channel from this node is what you'll use in place of the ramp from the tutorial to control where your pebbles should be.

Panupat

Ah one directly in Redshift! Thanks throttle.