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Other Tools for Working with Texture Layers

Other Ways of Adding Texture Layers to Shaders

In addition to using the render tree and the texture layer editor, there are a couple of additional ways to add texture layers to shaders. You can:

• Use the Render toolbar’s Modify > Texture > Add menu, as described in Adding More Textures.

• Use the connection icons in the current shader’s property editor, as described in Method 2: Connecting Shaders Using the Property Editor.

Finding Texture Layers in the Explorer

In the explorer, texture layers are located under the materials and shaders to which they belong. The easiest way to explore texture layers is to set the explorer scope to Materials.

You can expand a material to access its texture layers, and you can expand the material’s shaders to access their texture layers. All layers belonging to a given material or shader are under the TextureLayers node.

When you expand a given texture layer’s node, you can see which shaders are connected to its ports. You can also see which of the parent shader’s ports have been added the texture layer.

Texture Layers in Shader Property Editors

When you add a texture layer to a shader, its properties are listed along with the shader’s regular properties. This means that each layer’s property editor is appended to its shader’s property editor. Editing the shader’s properties opens a combined property editor for the shader, its layers, and all of the ports that are added to each layer.

For information about editing layer properties, see Setting Texture Layer Properties.

In a shader’s property editor, a small blue “L” in a parameter’s connection icon means that the parameter has been added to one or more texture layers. The same “L” appears in the corresponding port of the shader’s render tree node (see Working with Texture Layers in the Render Tree).

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