The right way to overlap textures.

[Dan Pasch]

I am sure this is a rudimentary question, but I am a rudimentary student of the blending. Lets say I use a noise texture to make the cow pattern below (and I color the spots blue). Then I use a voronoi texture to make the polka dots below that (and I color the spots yellow).

What is the method to combine them so that maybe I only get the the blue where there is also voronoi, or vice versa, or blue where there is not voronoi, or vice versa? Basically intersections, differences, unions, etc. BUT without the color changing. Its always blue or yellow – it doesn’t mix to green or dark blue or dark yellow.

I ask because Mix RGB always seems to alter the color no matter the method of mixing and Mix Shader works but then the output is a shader and not a color.

[Adrian Bellworthy]

Hey @dpasch80
If I understand correctly, it works for you with a mix shader, but you want a color output instead of a shader output?

Simple solution is to use a Shader to RGB node after the Mix Shader.
you will find it under Converter > Shader to RGB

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi @dpasch80 ,

If I understand it correctly, you mean something like this:

Make sure that whatever you plug into the Factor of the Mix Node can only be 0 or 1.

I used a Colorramp set to Constant, but a Math Node set to Greater Than, or so would also work.

[Omar Domenech]

If you want to see a video about this, Kent does what you’re asking for in this lesson of this course:

https://cgcookie.com/lessons/material-concrete-columns

[Dan Pasch]

Thanks all. Each of you actually answered different challenging bits of what I was running into and the video helped me conceptualize it more. Its still not to the point of being intuitive to me but just doing more projects will hammer it in.

[Author]

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