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Sometimes in Photoshop I like to take a painting of, say, a sign, and use the blend-if sliders to deteriorate it against an underlying wood grain or planks. It makes the sign look very weathered.

Only problem is I'd like to pull a mask off the remaining 'paint' for various Maxwell texture creation reasons (reflectivity, displacement, etc), but you can't just put a white or black or green image through the same blend-if sliders because the exact positions are not recorded numerically.

What would be a good way of pulling a blend-if-based mask? (the blend if sliders are not hard thresholds; they have soft transitions built in, and are a convenient way to previz)

Difference mattes? Abandon blend-if for the actual work and simulate it using other methods?

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also: http://maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopi ... 01&t=36622

Here's a simple way to do what you want.

1) set visibility and drag the top image color channel you want to work with to the "Create new channel" button.

2) set visibility and drag the the bottom image color channel you want to work with to the "Create new channel" button.

As a result of this you should have 2 greyscale alphas... the reason I do this is to make sure I don't accidentally mess up the original channel by accident or grab the wrong thing

3) copy and paste both alphas (as layers) into a new greyscale document

4) set up "Blend if" layers settings the same way you did in the original (using grey).

Notice if you turn off the underlying layer you have transparency -- the transparency can be made into a selection which can then be saved as an alpha for opacity masks... these opacity masks can be re-blended as much as need be.

BTW, I agree Substances are very cool -- and Substance Designer is basically the same as a non-linear Photoshop (node based interface)... does just about everything you might need from Photoshop (and then some) as far as material creation is concerned.

Best,
Jason.

cool, I'll check it out.

Glad I asked

Half Life wrote:Here's a simple way to do what you want.



BTW, I agree Substances are very cool -- and Substance Designer is basically the same as a non-linear Photoshop (node based interface)... does just about everything you might need from Photoshop (and then some) as far as material creation is concerned.

Best,
Jason.

I see you are way ahead of me on the substance thing...

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 19&t=36582

Or this:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... =2&t=36583