RGB Mask Master

Blender 3.3 – 5.2 · Windows, macOS and Linux · Substance 3D Painter optional

Painter-style RGB masks, baked, layered and painted in Blender, with a round trip to Substance 3D Painter. Select an asset, press New Mask Set: ambient occlusion and curvature are baked from the low poly, and a red, green and blue layer stack is built for you. Tune it, paint it, put it straight onto your own materials, or send the whole asset to Painter and bring the masks back.

It appears in Blender's add-on list as Tachyon RGB Mask Master, and in the viewport as the RGB Mask card.

Getting started

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Preferences

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

Release history

Support

Questions, bugs and ideas: join the Tachyon Studio Discord, or message us through Superhive.