Texture Blending Modes¶
Blending Modes are different methods of controlling how the texture influences material properties. While a blending mode defines the specific operation performed, blending factor controls the amount, the overall «strength» of this operation. For textures such blending factor is set via sliders in the Influence panel.
- Blend
- Blending operation to perform. See Color Blend Modes for details on each blending mode.
- RGB to Intensity
- With this option enabled, an RGB texture (affects color) is used as an intensity texture (affects a value).
- Blend Color
- If the texture is mapped to Color, what color is blended in according to the intensity of the texture?
- Negative
- The effect of the Texture is negated. Normally white means on, black means off, Negative reverses that.
- Stencil
- The active texture is used as a mask for all following textures. This is useful for semitransparent textures and «Dirt Maps». Black sets the pixel to «untexturable». The Stencil mode works similar to a layer mask in a 2D program. The effect of a stencil texture cannot be overridden, only extended. You need an intensity map as input.
- Destination Value
The value (not for RGB) with which the Intensity texture blends with the current value. Two examples:
- The Emit value is normally 0. With a texture mapped to Emit you will get maximal effect, because DVar is 1 by default. If you set DVar to 0 no texture will have any effect.
- If you want transparent material, and use a texture mapped to Alpha, nothing happens with the default settings, because the Alpha value in the Material panel is 1. So you have to set DVar to 0 to get transparent material (and of course Z Transparency also). This is a common problem for beginners. Or do it the other way round: set Alpha to 0 and leave Dvar on 1. Of course the texture is used inverted then.