How to create Mask in the Material Editor?

[anonymous_user_92f658e6]

What’s the best way to create a mask such as the example seen in the image attached, using nothing but nodes (i.e. NO texture lookups) in the Material Editor?

[Luos (Luos_83)]

Not sure if there is a better way, but play with this:

That said, if you have a texture sample with i.e. an alpa, or Red, Green, or Blue channel left you could but the mask in there.

[anonymous_user_92f658e6]

What’s the visual result of that network?

[Luos (Luos_83)]

In the 15 minutes you needed to wait for a reply, and for me to make a screenshot… you could have already tested that.

Like I said, play around with, combine a few and you will get the result you need.

[anonymous_user_92f658e6]

I sure could have. But there are more people who may be interested in finding a solution for this who may not be thinking it’s the best use of their time to load up the editor and re-create every single example of a node graph they come across - just to see what they do.

[anonymous_user_92f658e6]

Thanks Luos! There were some limitations to your approach after I tried it myself, but your network inspired me to take a similar approach - which allows any rectangular shape to be masked out based on X/Y or U/V coordinates:

[Luos (Luos_83)]

Glad I could help
Might need it myself some day

hmm I wonder if this also works with a spherical gradient.

[anonymous_user_92f658e6]

I believe that would either give you a filled circle, or a stroked circle (depending on which output you used) - but in order to get rectangular shapes the best alternative might be a DiamondGradient that is rotated 45 degrees.

[Two-faced]

omfg is there any way to get the same result without ridiculous noodles from hell? Material editor is weird…

[anonymous_user_8725734e]

This thread is hella old, but I unspaghetti’d this method and added an inversion param.