Hi @blindminds ,
Missing StrataGenerateMaterialTopologyTree implementation for node MaterialExpressionReroute
This should be fixed in our main branch (for 5.3).
I don’t know that you can combine the two, or add Substrate inputs/outputs to existing Material Layers inputs/outputs.
About material layers: As of today you can still use its parameters to flow inputs and parameter blend them as do up until now. I the end you can plug all the inputs into a single slab. That should be enough to support blending of multiple slab that are not layered vertically.
Later, this workflow will likely face an update to be able to scale up to more parameters that could be plug in multiple slabs.
We do not plan to support extracting albedo from a bsdf to reset it behind in the graph.
That is the material layers workflow (that needs to be imporved) but not the Substrate workflow where BSDF are created when ready for exporting to gbuffer and lighting.
You can still use multiple attribute flow that are not blended together but simply fed into different slabs that are then combined using operators. That should work I believe.
Is this correct, that using substrate will not solve the issue of needing a seperate mesh in same location that has a transparent material?
Correct, this is a higher level behavior Substrate does not have the goal to fix (blending mode is still per material). Substrate Substrate only operates at the material level.