Building Your First Layered Material

In this guide, we'll create a layered material using Material Layers.

We'll be blending 2 SurfaceMaterials together using a MaskMaterial that uses height blending and vertex color masks.

Before we begin, there's a few things we need to know about the system. See the Architecture Overview for the big picture.

LayerMaterials (SurfaceMaterial, MaskMaterial etc.) are used in LayerGraphs. You connect different LayerNodes such as Surface, Mask, Overlay and Data together to create a layered material.

A LayerGraph is used by a LayerStack to generate the final layered material.

Step 1: Creating the LayerMaterials

• Create a new SurfaceMaterial in the filesystem. Assign the surface_base_material.gdshader file to the shader slot.
• Duplicate and assign different sets of textures to both materials.
• Create a new MaskMaterial in the filesystem. Assign the mask_hblend_vcol.gdshader file to the shader slot.

Step 2: Using LayerMaterials in a LayerGraph

• Create a new LayerGraph in the filesystem.
• Double-click the LayerGraph, then click Open Graph. This opens the LayerGraph editor.
• Drag and drop the SurfaceMaterials and MaskMaterial into the LayerGraph.
• Connect the SurfaceNodes into the Base and Blend input ports of the MaskNode.
• Create an OutputNode and connect the MaskNode to it.
• Save the LayerGraph by clicking Save from the file popup or in the OutputNode.

Step 3: Generating the final material using a LayerStack

• Create a new LayerStack from the filesystem or a material slot.
• Assign a LayerGraph to the LayerStack and press Generate.

And that's it! It should now result in a blended material. Make sure the vertex colors are correctly set up. You can paint vertex colors with a vertex painter addon like Nexus Vertex Painter, or in a 3D modeling program like Blender.

See the guides Learn how it works See the reference