tyMeshBlend Modifier

The tyMeshBlend modifier can be used to blend overlapping meshes together.


Blend normals

  • Blend normals: when enabled, the explicit normals of overlapping meshes will be blended together along intersections between the meshes, allowing for more seamless transitions between the intersecting surfaces.

The “blend normals” mode of the tyMeshBlend modifier operates on meshes of objects that the modifier is instanced across. So if you want to blend the normals along the intersection of object A and B, the tyMeshBlend modifier must be instanced over both objects. Non-instanced tyMeshBlend modifiers will have no effect.

  • Distance: explicit normals within this distance from an intersecting mesh will be blended, proportionate to their inverse squared distance to the intersection.

  • Smoothing: the number of smoothing interations to apply as a pre-pass to the explicit normals of each mesh. Increasing this value can help to smooth transitions between meshes with a lot of divergent normals.

  • Show normals: when enabled, blended normals will be displayed in the viewport, scaled to the specified length.

Mask

  • Generate blend mask: when enabled, grayscale color values will be assigned to the specified map channel, corresponding to the amount of normal blending a given vertex on the mesh underwent during the blend operation.

You can use the generated blend mask to blend between material textures on blended surfaces. Lighter color values of the mask represent areas that underwent more blending than other areas. Dark/black values represent areas of the surface that were not affected by the blend operation.