Blending

As one of Mixer’s primary methods for creating Mixes, you’ll blend between both layers and masks. Blending is the process of combining the two layers and adjusting how they interact. This page contains information on each blending mode available in Mixer.

Surface, Atlas, and Solid Layers

These three layer types support blending with the underlying layers. To see the additional set of properties to blend, the selected layer cannot be the base layer of the Mix. When one of these layers is above another, the following properties will appear, allowing you to adjust the blending of the selected layer.

There are two main options when blending: either using the Threshold with the height data (From Below or From Above) or blending based on opacity.

• Blend type: You can select a blending option.
  • From Below: The current layer will blend from below the surface. This means the current layer will come up from below. Surface and solid layers are set to this mode by default.

Increasing blue layer's threshold, blending from below.

• From Above: The current layer will blend from above the surface. This means the current layer will come down from above.

Increasing blue layer's threshold, blending from above.

• Opacity Masked: Blend the layer based on the opacity instead of its height information. Atlas layers are set to this mode by default. When working on a 3D asset, any new layer will be set to opacity masked by default.

• Threshold: Control the vertical displacement of the current layer, based on the blend type chosen.

• Radius: Control the fall-off or the smoothness of the blending at the points of intersection between the two layers.

Increasing the blue layer's blend radius from 0 to 1.

• Preserve Details: Controls the radius effect’s base layer detail preservation based on ambient occlusion (AO) information in the Mix. Increasing this will allow more high frequency details through the current layer’s detail of its edges.

• Opacity: Control the transparency of the layer.

• Wrap To Underlying: Control which layer’s height information to preserve. If set to maximum, all height information will come from the layer below. If at minimum, all height information will come from the current layer.

Increasing the flat gray layer's wrap to base from 0 to 1.

• Blur underlying: Blurs high details of the underlying mix.

*To learn about Blend Modes, see Blend Modes.