Hello! I’ve recently discovered InstaMat and been testing it out. I have this simple node setup that lets me reveal the Voronoi pattern wherever I paint with the Mesh Mask Painting node; however, this is more of a workaround than what I was trying to achieve in the first place.
What I originally wanted was to expose the color parameter from the Flood Fill to Color node as an input parameter so I can use it in the layering engine and reuse it easily in other projects. The thing is, I haven’t found a way (if there’s one) to use a brush layer as the image input. I’ve tried using Reference Generator and masks (Mesh Mask Painting, for example), but I don’t know how to use them as the image input.
So my question is: is there a way to do that? Just like in Substance Painter you can use an anchor point as an image input.
If not, is there a way to expose the Mesh Painting node as a parameter to use it in the layer engine? From what I could try, it seems that I can expose brush parameters but not the painting functionality itself.
Currently, it is not possible to supply a layer reference as an image input. However, I’ve mentioned this functionality internally to the team. Also, it’s not currently possible to expose the Mesh Painting node as a parameter in the layering engine.
In the meantime, what you could do is paint in the Element Graph, then import your element as an Element Layer in the layer-based Asset Texturing project. Then, set the layer’s projection mode to UV instead of Tri Planar.
InstaMAT lets you have multiple tabs open at the same time. You could paint the effect in the Element Graph on the asset in the viewport with your node setup and even re-map outputs from the element graph to different channels in the layer-based project.
If you have any questions on this workflow, please feel free to ask!
After creating an Element Layer (or dragging the element from the Package Management panel into the layer stack), you use the Layer Channels panel to map an output from the graph to any of the available channels in the Asset Texturing project. For example here you can see that I’ve mapped a “Custom Output” output to both the Base Color and theHeight outputs. This combined with References might help automate part of the process.
