Advanced Masks Bundle

Advanced Vertex Paint Pro + RGB Mask Master · Blender 3.3 – 5.2

Two add-ons that make the masks a game asset needs, in Blender. Advanced Vertex Paint Pro puts masks in vertex color: fill, alpha and remove across many meshes at once, multi-mesh painting, gradients, Photoshop-style layers and procedural occlusion, curvature, texture and light. RGB Mask Master bakes Painter-style RGB masks into a texture: AO and curvature from the low poly, a red, green and blue layer stack, hand painting, the mask straight onto your materials, and a round trip to Substance 3D Painter.

They appear in Blender's add-on list as Advanced Vertex Color Pro and Tachyon RGB Mask Master. Each is standalone, and they work side by side on the same asset.

This page covers the two together first, then each add-on on its own.

Getting started

Which one, when

Using them together

• Different data, no conflict. Advanced Vertex Paint writes color attributes; RGB Mask Master writes images and its own nodes in your materials. On the same asset neither touches what the other made.
• One channel per effect. Both think in red, green and blue: a channel for dirt, one for wear, one for a second color. A material that reads three channels can take its masks from either.
• Broad strokes and fine detail. Vertex color carries the large-scale variation across a whole kit — tint, dirt gradients, wet areas — while an RGB texture mask carries the fine wear on the assets the camera gets close to.

Vertex Paint · The card

The card is the add-on's interface: a floating panel drawn in the viewport, in the same navy and blue as the rest of the Tachyon Studio tools.

Buttons that cannot act right now are greyed out, so the card always shows what is possible from where you are.

Vertex Paint · Fill, alpha and remove

A mesh with no color attribute gets one the first time you color it. Faces are filled per corner, so neighbouring faces can hold different colors without bleeding into each other.

Vertex Paint · Paint every selected mesh at once

Paint opens one Vertex Paint session across all the selected meshes. They are merged into a single temporary paint mesh in a Paint tab, so a stroke can cross from one mesh onto the next, and every Vertex Paint brush Blender has works on all of them together.

• Red / Green / Blue set the brush color while you paint. Remove paints white.
• Started from Edit Mode with only some faces selected, the session paints only those faces (face masking on), and only on the meshes you were editing.
• Apply writes the paint back into each mesh, in each mesh's own color format. Cancel throws it away and puts every mesh back exactly as it was.
• Leaving Vertex Paint any other way — switching mode, changing workspace — applies the paint too. Only Cancel discards it.
• Editing the paint mesh's geometry during a session is refused: it could no longer be split back into the originals. Undo the edit, or cancel.

Vertex Paint · Gradient

In a Paint session, Gradient lets you drag a line across the meshes. The colors blend along it and stay live until you apply.

Vertex Paint · Spline

Spline is a freehand gradient. Draw a stroke over the meshes; when you let go it is fitted to a smooth curve with a few points, and the colors follow the curve. Drag any point to reshape it. It has the same chips and sliders as Gradient, and stays editable until Apply.

Vertex Paint · Layers

Open Advanced at the bottom of the card. Every mesh gets a layer stack, like Photoshop, and nothing is destroyed until you flatten.

Layers carry through multi-object Paint sessions. While you paint a layer, the add-on draws the finished composite over the meshes, so you see the result, not just the layer.

Vertex Paint · Procedural layers

In a Paint session, the Procedural layers row adds a layer that is computed rather than painted. Each one stays editable later: select it and press Edit.

Every procedural layer shares these:

Occlusion

Raycast ambient occlusion: creases and contact points get the color.

• Distance — how far each ray looks.
• Rays — more is smoother, fewer is faster.
• Occluded by — All (every painted mesh), Own (each mesh on its own), or Scene (everything visible, painted or not).

Curvature

Colors the sharp edges, the crevices, or both.

• Convex / Concave / Both — edges, cavities, or both.
• Sensitivity — how sharp counts as an edge.
• Smooth — soften the result.

Texture

Any image, read as grayscale: the light parts get the color.

• The image — load one from disk, or step through the images already in the file with ‹ ›.
• View — projected from where you are looking. From View projects again from the current view, and Front faces only keeps it off the back of the mesh.
• Triplanar — projected from all three axes and blended, so every side is covered.
• Scale — how often it repeats. Blend — how sharply the three projections meet (Triplanar).

Light

A directional light around the meshes: lit surfaces get the color, shadowed ones do not.

• Click and drag anywhere in the viewport — the light follows the mouse.
• +X … Down — snap it to an axis.
• Azimuth / Elevation — set it exactly.
• Softness and Rays — crisp or soft shadows.
• Shade by angle — fade with the angle to the light, not just lit or shadowed.
• Shadows from — All, Own, Scene or None.
• Light From View — put the light where you are looking from.

Gradient and Spline layers

The Gradient and Spline tools also come as procedural layers, so a gradient can sit in the stack with its own blend mode and opacity and be edited later.

Vertex Paint · Preferences

Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Advanced Vertex Color:

RGB Mask · Which meshes

The scope chips at the top of the card decide what New Mask Set and Send to Painter work on.

One mask per asset

With + Children, One Mask per Asset (on by default) gives all the meshes under a selected empty — or a parent mesh — one mask: one texture, one Painter texture set. Their mask UVs are laid out together so they do not overlap.

One mask for all

One Mask for All (with Selected or + Children) gives every mesh New Mask Set or Send to Painter reaches — across all the selected assets — one mask: one texture, one Painter texture set. Use it when several props should share a single RGB mask, like a set of pieces that ship together.

• Their mask UVs must not overlap in one texture. When they do (each asset laid out 0–1 on its own, the usual case), the add-on copies them into a new UV map, RGBMask Packed, and packs every mesh's islands together into it. Your own UV maps are never changed.
• Meshes without a mask UV map get one made for all of them together (Smart UV Project).
• One texture now covers every asset, so each gets a share of its resolution: raise the set's texture size if the detail gets too soft.
• It overrides One Mask per Asset; turning One Mask per Asset back on turns it off.

Ignored collections

Collections you never want in a mask — collision hulls, decals, LODs, high polys — are left out of mask sets, bakes (also as occluders) and Send to Painter.

• Ignore on the card ticks the scene's collections for this file. A collection inside an ignored one is ignored too.
• Preferences ▸ Ignored Collections is a list for every file. Rows accept names or wildcards: Collision, LOD*, *_high. Not case sensitive.
• The card shows what is in play, e.g. 14 meshes, 50 ignored.

RGB Mask · The mask UV map

The mask is baked, painted and exported on its own UV map — the second UV map by default, so your first map stays the texturing UVs. If a mesh has only one, a map called RGBMask is made with Smart UV Project. The first map is never touched.

• Mask UV on the card picks the map; New Mask UV Map makes one for every mesh of the set.
• Send to Painter exports this map as Painter's first UV channel.

RGB Mask · Bakes

AO and curvature are baked with Cycles from the low poly itself — no high poly, no cage — on the GPU when one is set up in Preferences ▸ System. Curvature follows Painter's convention (0.5 = flat, brighter = convex, darker = concave) and works across UV seams and hard edges. Your objects, materials and render settings are never touched.

AO reach and edge width follow the objects' size — a bolt and a building need very different distances.

Bake preview

Preview Bake… shows the curvature on the meshes while you tune it: it is redrawn on the GPU as you drag Edge Width or Edge Strength, so it follows the slider. The preview shows what the settings affect — flat surfaces dark, worn edges bright. AO shows Blender's live ambient occlusion the same way: open surfaces dark, occlusion bright.

• Fast / Normal / Fine — a 256, 512 or 1024 px preview.
• Bake Maps does the exact bake at the set's resolution and closes the preview. Close Preview leaves the real maps as they were.

RGB Mask · Layers and masks

Each layer paints a colour where its mask is white, with a blend mode and an opacity — top of the stack first, like Painter. Drag the grip to reorder, double-click to rename, click the eye to hide.

Add Layer offers ready-made layers, each in red, green, blue, white or black: Fill, Paint, Dirt (Occlusion), Edge Wear, Cavity, Grunge, Height Gradient and Top Light.

Layer blend modes: Normal, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Screen, Lighten, Darken, Overlay, Difference. A mask starts Black (hidden until the mask adds to it) or White (shown until the mask takes away).

What a mask is made of

Add to Mask stacks effects, each with its own blend (Normal, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Lighten, Darken) and opacity:

Position and Contrast work like Painter's histogram scan: where the black / white cut sits, and how hard it is.

View shows the whole result, the active layer's mask in black and white, or a single channel. Lit / Flat shows the mask lit by the scene or as exact colours.

RGB Mask · Painting

Paint Mask paints the active layer's mask in the viewport: White shows the layer, Black hides it, Erase reveals the effects below. X swaps white and black. An asset of many meshes is painted in one go — one stroke crosses every mesh of the set.

Filters for the painted mask: Blur, Sharpen, Invert, Fill White, Fill Black, Clear.

Painting uses the add-on's own brush, so your brushes are never edited. Painted masks are packed into the .blend when you save. Isolate While Painting (preferences) paints with only the asset shown, which keeps big scenes smooth.

RGB Mask · The library

Your own breakup textures and brush alphas, in one place, as plain image files you can also manage in Explorer.

• Import Textures / Import Alphas copies images in, several at once (PNG, JPG, TGA, TIFF, EXR, BMP, WebP, HDR).
• Browse shows a thumbnail grid; one click puts a texture into the active layer's mask, an alpha on the brush, or a texture on the stencil.
• A few starter items are generated on first use, so it is never empty. Removing an item moves it to a _removed folder; nothing is deleted.
• Preferences ▸ Library Folder sets where it lives.

RGB Mask · On your materials

Mask Only shows the RGB mask alone on the meshes; On Material shows the meshes' own materials with the mask applied. One set of controls drives every material of the asset, whether the mask was made in Blender or came from Painter, and painting shows on the real material live.

The add-on works on its own copies of your materials — the originals are never edited. Take Mask off Materials removes the copies and shows the mask alone.

Trim Master materials take the mask too: their tiling RGB mask is swapped for this one, with either the card's channel settings or their own.

RGB Mask · Confirm and export

Confirm RGB Mask bakes the result into one PNG, plugs it into the materials (UV Map ▸ Image Texture ▸ RGB Mask node) and removes the layers. The asset then needs no add-on. Ctrl + Z undoes it.

RGB Mask Folder… sets where Confirm saves and how it names the file:

Export RGB Mask writes one RGB PNG at any resolution, without changing anything; Re-export writes it again to the same file. An export that comes out all black warns you instead of failing silently.

RGB Mask · Substance 3D Painter

Send to Painter opens the meshes in Substance 3D Painter as one project:

• a texture set per mask (per mesh, per asset with + Children, or one for everything with One Mask for All);
• every mesh map baked at 4K (or 512 to 8K) — normal, world-space normal, ID, AO, curvature, position, thickness;
• the RGB mask layers already built, from your own Painter starter assets;
• saved next to your .blend, in a painter folder.

Send again and the same project is updated in place: the mesh is reloaded, new texture sets are set up, everything is re-baked, and what you painted in Painter stays. If Painter has unsaved work it asks first — Save, Discard or Not Now — and never throws work away silently.

Get from Painter brings each texture set's RGB mask back onto its meshes (the project must be open in Painter). Show Painter Result switches between the Painter mask and the Blender layers, and Make Mask in Blender turns a Painter-only mask into Blender layers at any time.

Finding Painter

The add-on finds Painter by itself: a running copy, the Windows install registry, every Steam library, Adobe and older Allegorithmic install folders. If it is somewhere else, set Preferences ▸ Painter. The preferences say what was found.

The bridge's small plugin copies itself into Painter's startup folder on the first send. If Painter was already open then, restart it once — the job waits and starts by itself.

RGB Mask · Preferences

Every shortcut is a normal Blender keymap entry and can be changed, with any modifiers.

Limits worth knowing

• One edition at a time (Advanced Vertex Paint). Basic and Pro cannot be enabled together; the second one declines and says why.
• Layers need Flatten before export — see the tip above.
• Geometry edits end a Paint session's ability to split. Adding or deleting vertices in the paint mesh is refused on Apply; undo the edit or Cancel.
• Very dense meshes make Occlusion and Light slower, as they cast rays per vertex. Lower Rays while you look, raise it for the final.
• RGB Mask Master bakes on its own UV map — the second map by default; a mesh with only one gets a map made with Smart UV Project. The first map, your texturing UVs, is never touched.

Troubleshooting

Network use and files written

Neither add-on opens a socket, sends telemetry or checks a licence. Advanced Vertex Paint writes nothing but its own preferences; its Texture layer reads the image you pick. RGB Mask Master keeps its bakes and painted masks packed in the .blend; it writes files only when you ask — Confirm's and Export's PNG in your RGB mask folder, items you add to its library, and for Send to Painter the files it hands over (in a painter folder next to the .blend) plus its small plugin in Painter's startup folder.

Support

Questions, bug reports and feature requests — join the Tachyon Studio Discord: https://discord.gg/sksWuJRsqS