Hi there,
Yes I have been looking at Blended materials and it maybe that is something I would add once I am confident that my customers even want that function. They may already have that function on their landscape materials.
So far, I have created a ‘dome’ mesh, that can be Nanite supported, that sits at the base of the tree, that can have the same master material as a variant, but has the facility to use the same textures as the landscape. This has the added benefits of only needing that Landscape Layer for other things, and the landscape doesn’t have to have nanites supported. In addition the Contrast etc will also match that of the Tree applied Vertex Paint, and not suffer the washed out effects of a Landscape Shader, as seen in the picture above. That used a bespoke Variant of the Trees Material, that matches, on the ‘dome’ mesh, that also has Tessellation/nanites enabled.
The Dome can be scaled in height, to bring the Moss/Snow etc upwards, without having to cause a lot of unwanted stretching on the tessellation.
As you say, Blending would also be preferable, and is the next step on the workflow. Finding a solution that combines all these features, is difficult. I have studied many YT videos on the individual techniques, but will need to find a way to ‘blend’ them all together into one material. As this is perhaps the first Material of this type I have attempted, I find it a steep learning curve, where to use Multiply/Add/Lerp sections together.
In addition I am also hand painting Height Maps to make sure the correct parts of the moss end up the correct shape, many methods, including the awesome Materialize, cannot seem to cope with that.
I am also trying the same with Fallen Leaves, although, even using Occlusion Mapping doesn’t cope with leaf thickness, I may use geometry. I will also look into ‘Cloth’ physics on a mesh, so it can be multi-use as opposed to bespoke for every tree.
I already have the ability to grow Ivy around the base and upwards, that can be an Optional Mesh.