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I would like to be able to assign grass and dirt to certain parts of the mesh and have them gradate into each other instead of having a hard edge, just like in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilmS_CeKCuo

The plugin shown in the video itself is not available to be downloaded. I was wondering if there was another way I could achieve the same effect.

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I'm including an image to describe exactly what I'm trying to achieve. In the video, the blender user has a plugin which allows him to assign the textures to the faces, and the textures gradate automatically. I heard that this was possible without the use of the plugin, but I wasn't sure how to achieve it.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Not really. I appreciate your effort, though. What I meant is that I want to be able to gradate the texture of a dirt path with the grass that surrounds it without having to use an image mask. I want to reduce the amount of memory being used for textures, so I thought I might be able to do a procedural gradation. A gradation based on height (or requiring the use of a mapping node) doesn't work for me, as the dirt path is at varying elevations. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 21:56
  • $\begingroup$ How do I add a bounty to a question? I'm willing to pay to have this question answered. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 22:09
  • $\begingroup$ What's wrong with the mapping node in particular? $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 22:20

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You can use vertex colors. If you paint a mask in black and white in Vertex Paint mode(ctrl+tab -> Vertex Paint) and then mix your desired shaders or textures using vertex color node, the textures will blend gradually:

enter image description here

You can make various gradients from a lot of things with nodes so this is probably not the only solution. I would recommend not to limit yourself by excluding usage of any nodes such as mapping node when working with your materials for no reason. It's usually best to use all the tools available to you.

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  • $\begingroup$ I already knew about the use of masks. I was doing that before. I was hoping that I could learn how it was done in the video that I linked, in which the user assigns the materials and the plugin gradates them automatically. I heard from another blender user that it could be done without the plugin. And that appealed to me because I wanted to use as little texture data as possible (which a mask adds.) As for why I don't use a mapping node, it's because the dirt path is at different elevations. I can't set the mapping node to "the edges of the path," or at least I don't know how. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 22:42
  • $\begingroup$ Or maybe what I'm asking for is simply impossible without the use of a third party addon. I appreciate all the answers you guys have given me. I don't mean to be so difficult. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 22:43
  • $\begingroup$ Texture data is a different thing than vertex colors. With vertex colors the interpolation between values assigned to vertices is computed, as opposed to textures that have to have the gradient in themselves. There is really no other magic trick - whatever the add-on in your video is, it must be using some sort of a mask anyway but with textures you have as many 'data points' as the image file you use has pixels, while with vertex colors it's as many as you have vertices(although they are made of 32 bit floats and texture pixels can have only 8 bits per channel, but they may need UVs) . $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 5:08

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