Layers

Each texture set has a layer stack, edited in the Layers panel. Layers composite top-to-bottom — upper layers paint over lower ones.

Layer types

Type	What it is
Paint	Hand-painted pixels — what you brush, fill, and stamp onto the surface.
Fill	A procedural layer that fills its channels from a constant colour or a source (image / bake / generator). Pair it with a mask to confine it.
Folder	Groups layers together; the group's opacity, blend mode, and mask apply to everything inside.

Paint vs Fill layers

Paint and Fill are the two main ways to put content on the surface, and they work in opposite ways:

	Paint layer	Fill layer
Workflow	Destructive — brush, fill, and stamp bake pixels straight into the layer, just like a Photoshop pixel layer.	Recipe-based / non-destructive — stores how to fill, not baked pixels. Every setting stays editable and re-evaluates live.
Editing	Paint over, erase, or smudge what's there; once a stroke is laid down it isn't separately re-editable.	Change the source, colour, or transform at any time — nothing is "baked in."
Merging	Can be merged down into a single pixel layer, Photoshop-style (see Reordering, grouping & merging).	Merging bakes the recipe into pixels, so it's no longer re-editable afterward.

On a Paint layer you choose which channels a stroke writes through the brush's channel mask — paint a single channel (just Roughness), or several at once (Base Color + Normal), or all of them. See Brush settings & channels.

Fill layer properties

A Fill layer's Properties are a recipe with two parts: a per-channel source, and a shared texture transform.

Per-channel source

Each channel (Base Color, Roughness, …) shows a uniform value / colour by default. Each channel's title box is a drop target — drag a bake or an imported image onto it to drive that channel from that texture instead: the value control is replaced and a thumbnail appears in the box. Click the ✕ on the box to remove the texture and go back to the value. (There's no source dropdown — you drag to bind.)

Source	What it does
Value / Colour	A constant — the default, until you drop a texture.
Bake	Drag a baked map (Curvature, AO, World Normal, …) from Shelf ▸ Bakes.
Image	Drag a texture imported via Shelf ▸ Images.

Texture transform

Always shown, and applied to every channel driven by a bake or image (shared across the whole fill layer; a value-only layer just ignores it):

Control	Effect
Projection	UV (use the model's UVs) or Triplanar (project from three world axes — no UVs or seams needed).
Tiling U / V	How many times the texture repeats (0.01–16). Link Tiling U/V drives both from one slider.
Offset U / V	Slide the texture across the surface.
Rotation	Spin the texture, −180…180°.
Wrap	What happens past the texture's edge — Repeat, Repeat H/V, Clamp, Mirror, or Clip (decal) (transparent outside the image).
Filter	Bilinear (smooth) or Nearest (crisp pixels).
Triplanar Hardness	(Triplanar only) how sharp the blend is between the three projection planes.

A mask works the same way: add a Fill to the mask and drag a bake or image onto its source box (✕ to clear), with the same transform. The only difference: a mask resolves to grayscale, while a fill layer feeds the colour channels. See Masks & generators.

Blend mode & opacity

Opacity — how strongly the layer shows over what's below.
Blend mode — how the layer's colour combines with the layers beneath.

Note: as in Substance Painter, blend modes affect the Base Color (reflectance) only — Roughness, Metallic, Normal and Height composite normally regardless of the blend mode.

The full blend-mode set, grouped by family:

Family	Modes
Normal	`Normal`
Darken	`Darken`, `Multiply`, `Color Burn`, `Linear Burn`
Lighten	`Lighten`, `Screen`, `Color Dodge`, `Linear Dodge` (Add)
Contrast	`Overlay`, `Hard Light`, `Soft Light`, `Linear Light`, `Vivid Light`, `Pin Light`
Inversion	`Difference`, `Exclusion`, `Subtract`, `Divide`
Component (HSL)	`Hue`, `Saturation`, `Color`, `Luminosity`
Special	`Replace`, `Pass Through`

Most modes blend each R/G/B channel independently and match the same names in Substance Painter, Krita and Photoshop. The HSL family instead works in hue/saturation/luminosity space — e.g. Color takes the hue and saturation of the upper layer but keeps the luminosity of what's below.

Two special modes:

Replace — overwrites instead of blending: the layer's per-pixel alpha is forced to full coverage, so the layer paints solid over whatever is beneath (layer opacity and any mask still gate the result). Use it to punch a channel through cleanly.
Pass Through — valid on folders only. Instead of compositing the group as a single image, the folder's children blend directly with the layers outside the folder, as if the folder weren't there. On a Paint or Fill layer it falls back to Normal.

Per-channel control

A layer doesn't have to touch every channel. You can enable or disable each channel per layer, so a layer can affect (say) only Roughness, or paint Base Color + Normal but leave the rest. Toggle a layer's channels from the Layers / Properties panel.

Layer effects

Beyond masks, a Paint or Fill layer can carry one or more effects in its content stack. On a Paint or Fill layer, add one with right-click ▸ Add Effect. Unlike mask generators (which only shape a grayscale mask — see Masks & generators), effects modify the layer's own colour content. They composite top-to-bottom within the layer and apply before the layer blends into the stack below. Effects are available on Paint and Fill layers.

A dedicated Add Effect button appears in the Properties panel when you select a mask thumbnail — masks are where most effects are used. On a Paint or Fill layer the button isn't shown, so use the right-click menu instead.

Effect	What it does
Fill	A multi-channel fill applied inside the layer — it works just like a Fill layer: each channel is a value/colour by default, or drag a bake/image onto the channel's title box (✕ to clear), with a shared transform, plus its own blend mode. Lets one layer recolour or override several channels at once without a separate Fill layer.
Levels	Remaps tones with the five Levels handles — input black / mid (gamma) / white and output black / white, plus a clamp. On a content layer it targets one channel (Base Color by default) and can edit the master curve or an individual R/G/B component; an Invert toggle swaps the output black and white.
HSL	Hue / Saturation / Lightness colour grade, with an added Contrast control. Adjusts the layer's Base Color.
Kuwahara	Edge-preserving painterly smoothing — flattens colour into soft, brush-stroke-like regions while keeping edges crisp. Driven by a radius. Applies to Base Color.

Levels, HSL and Kuwahara grade Base Color. The Fill effect can write multiple channels. Effects sit in the layer's content stack and can be reordered, toggled, or removed like other stack entries.

Reordering, grouping & merging

Reorder — drag a layer up or down (or use the toolbar arrows).
Group — put layers in a folder to organise and mask them together.
Merge down — combine a layer into the one below it.

Layers can also be duplicated and deleted from the Layers panel's toolbar.

Masks (which hide parts of a layer) have their own page — see Masks & generators.