I added it to the scene, but it is showing nothing...
This may be due to adding the Smart Mesh Blend asset (a collection) inside the Target Collection. The modifier on the added object in the collection will warn you. Make sure the added asset is not inside the target collection.
👀 Also, make sure you added it from the File Browser in "Append" mode.
I can't see it blending with some simple cubes.
In order to blend reliably, you will need topology to interpolate the blending between vertices. This means you will need to either subdivide, bevel or remesh your source meshes to blend smoothly.
If you use only default cubes and a plane, it won't blend due to a lack of topology, but if you use a rounded subdivided cube with bevels and a grid, it will blend.
Can I blend materials with this?
Yes, the Wizard will add a Material Blend with an alpha gradient on the intersection onto all materials in the Target Collection. You can alternatively remove this when disabling this in the wizard when re-running the wizard.
To add this Material blend, run the wizard on the target collection and on any new objects in the target collection.
Can I bake these results to export to third-party engines?
Yes, you can bake the intersection debug mode to an emission shader and bake that to texture to use an an alpha mask in engine. You can also apply the blended mesh modifier stack and export as a mesh. This will preserve the normals on export.
What's developing in the near future?
Right now 2.0.3 is slated with intersection removal improvements and potential improvements to have material blending mode for performance (turn of Normal Blending), which might be more useful for large terrains that don't require normal blending.
🔬About research and development: I am also looking into seeing how to improve multi-material blending by proximity built in for higher quality material blending, which would require rebuilding the shader A and shader B to include each other at the seams. This may require either a new additional asset and a new wizard and addon function - but with the same idea, drag, drop, use the Wizard, get going.
📄 Extensive documentation on a new website is also being worked on.
💎Invest in support to get all this and more!
How do materials work?
The blended mesh object inherits the materials set by the instances it references, and if you have activated the Wizard "Blend Materials" option, it will also add an intersection material blend by alpha to all Target Collection materials - but you can use the modifier settings to override all materials either from the modifier material selector or to "inherit" the material from the blended mesh material tab in the Properties Editor - this will override all materials from the Target Collection.
My blended mesh spawned away from the target collection objects, or I can't see it.
This is expected behaviour, unless you told the Wizard to use Relative Position which will snap the blended mesh to the original Target Collection meshes. You can clear transforms, transform to where you want it to be, or use the toggle "Relative Position" in the modifier and it will snap to the target collection objects.
Can I get this for free?
Yes, when using the Blender fork called Bforartists, it is included by default in that GUI fork of Blender, and it is included in the opensource Github repository there as part of the source code.
Can I use this in Blender?
Yes, 4.5 or 5.0 or later. the Set Mesh Normal node is necessary to use, and the For Each Zone.
It is recommended to always use the latest Blender version for better Geometry Nodes performance and more stable normals - with better addon compatibility. This extension will always best support current alpha versions of Blender (the main trunk).
Trinumedia
