Channels

Channel in Ucupaint

A channel in Ucupaint represents a pair of an input and an output of a Ucupaint node.

Ucupaint channels represent the IO on the actual node

Each channel has at least one input and one output, but channels like the normal channel can have multiple outputs at the end. The base color/value of the channel is actually the default input of the node, as demonstarated on the gif below.

Base color/value of a channel corresponds to the default input of the node

If you notice that normal has a default value of (999, 999, 999), just ignore that, it's basically a litlle hack to make the normal channel work properly.

All the inputs and outputs can be connected anywhere, so you can connect the Ucupaint node to your custom node setups.

On channel list panel, you can do some basic operations to the channel list items, like add, move and remove.

Channels list panel

Creating New Channel

To create a new channel, you can use '+' button on the right of the channel list. The video below will show you how to create Emission channel.

You can see that the Ucupaint node will have new input and output sockets after you created a new channel.

Channel Types

There are three types of channels in Ucupaint, they are RGB, Value, and Normal.

RGB

RGB channel consists of three values of red, green, or blue. You can also enable alpha to add an alpha value, this also makes the base color transparent by default.

RGB channel options

If alpha is activated it will automatically change your material to use alpha blend on Eevee. The default value of alpha is 0.0 so your background will be transparent. If you create a layer with a mix blend, it will sit on top of your transparent background, which can be useful in many cases, like creating hair planes or vegetation.

Value

Value channels consist of a single value.

Value channel options

Normal

Normal channels consist of a normal vector, you can only have one normal channel per each Ucupaint node.

Normal channel options

Displacement Setup

Enabling Displacement Setup will do two things:

• Add subdivision surface modifiers to all objects that use the same material
• Add displacement node setup to active material

By doing this all bump maps used in layers will actually have bump geometry. Unless for layers which have 'Write Height' enabled in the layer channel settings.

Using Displacement

Experimental Features

Smoother Bump

Smooth bump can make your bump map smoother than the Blender default at the cost of precision.

Smooth Bump comparison

Parallax (Experimental)

Parallax is for creating parallax effects if you're using bump map. I suggest you save your file first before activating this option since it can freeze Blender. Please note that parallax only works in perspective view. Parallax is only available if you enable experimental features in Ucupaint User Preferences.

Parallax comparison