Feature Request: Use mask painting in Layering window for element graphs

InstaMAT Features Requests
1

In element graphs you can use a mesh paint mask input to direct certain inputs in an element graph, but you can only use it in the canvas viewport, not in the layering viewport.

Justification

Having the mesh painting mask direct features in an element graph directly in the layering window would potentially open the door for a plethora of brush painting effects in the layering workflow: Guiding rotation of guided scattering, using it for directional blur or warp to create smudging effects, controlling noise size etc etc.

Implementation Details

I don´t know the technical feasibility of this, the feedback in the canvas for the mesh painting node is quite good, but I don´t know if this would be possible in the layering viewport. If its too heavy, maybe add a “manual update” option to it, something that would only update AFTER each paint stroke, not on each “tick” of a brush stroke, or even only manually once you enable it.

2

I think “Reference Layers” could be able to drive other layer effects and such as well.

But I’m not sure I grasp the contents of the FR here. You want an ElementGraph that you can paint onto in layering mode? Then that node would do some transformation on the output?

3

Yeah, basically the mesh paint node that is available in the canvas should be able to drive features in the element graph of a layer, either through its mask layer or through a “reference layer” as you call it.
Like: I used the mesh paint node in a guided scatter element graph to drive scale/rotation of the scattered elements.
Having that available directly in the viewport would let me for example fill a layer with a scales material and then I could draw the scale/density/rotation directly in the viewport on the mesh.