Layer Masks
A layer mask hides part of a layer without deleting anything. Where the mask is black the layer is invisible and whatever is below it shows through; where it is white the layer is at full strength; grey is partial. Nothing is destroyed — paint the mask white again and the pixels come back.
A layer mask belongs to one layer and controls how much of that layer shows. A paint mask belongs to the model and protects regions of the surface from whatever tool you are holding. They are separate systems and you can use both at once.
Adding and editing a mask
Add a mask to the selected layer from the Layers panel. The layer row grows a second thumbnail beside its own; click that thumbnail to make the mask the target of your brush, and paint it the way you would paint anything else — black to hide, white to reveal, any brush, any mask or stencil. Click the layer thumbnail again to go back to painting the layer itself.
Overlay Opacity controls how strongly the mask is drawn over the model while you work on it, so you can see what you are doing without losing sight of the material underneath. Removing a mask discards it.
Generating a mask from the model
A mask does not have to be painted by hand. Vertexix can bake one from the geometry itself, which is how you get wear along edges or grime in recesses to land where the form actually puts them.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Resolution | Size in texels of the mask image. |
| Mask Type | Occlusion, Cavity, Curvature or Edge — see below. |
| Invert | Flips the result, so what was hidden is revealed and the reverse. |
| Include Normal Map | Lets the material's normal map perturb the probe, so painted detail contributes to the mask and not only the real geometry. |
| Max ray distance (meters) | How far an occlusion ray travels before it counts as unobstructed. |
| Probe distance (meters) | How far the cavity, curvature and edge probes reach along the surface — the scale of the detail they respond to. |
| Intensity | Multiplies the result before it is written. |
| Smoothing intensity | How strongly the finished mask is smoothed. |
| Smoothing degree | How wide that smoothing reaches. |
Occlusion darkens where the surface is enclosed — under a collar, inside a slot. Cavity picks out narrow recesses. Curvature separates convex from concave. Edge isolates the ridges where two faces meet at an angle, which is the mask most edge-wear work starts from.
Occlusion masks are available in every edition. Cavity, Curvature and Edge masks need Ultra, the same gate as the Cavity, Curvature and Edge Maps bake.
Adjusting a generated mask
A baked mask rarely lands with the contrast you want first time, so the mask editor carries a levels control:
- Black point — everything at or below this value becomes fully hidden.
- White point — everything at or above it becomes fully visible.
- Midtones — bends the curve between the two, biasing the mask toward hiding or revealing without moving either end.
Pulling the black and white points toward each other sharpens a soft mask into something closer to a cut-out; pushing them apart softens it. You can keep painting on the mask by hand afterwards — a generated mask is a starting point, not a finished one.