Layer stacks

Overview

Layer stacks are groups of procedural weight layers that can be applied to any object in a scene.

If you apply the same layer stack to multiple objects, you can edit them both at the same time.

The only thing to watch out for is that the vertex group names must be the same on both objects, or it won't work on one of the objects.

Interface

This area has the layer stack list and allows you to add, remove, copy, edit and bake layer stacks

You can also set a layer stack to manual refresh mode, which means that it won't slow down on heavy meshes.

Note: If a layer stack has been created by Alpha Trees, some options will be greyed out, as they are meant to be used from the Alpha Trees panel.

On each layer stack slot, there are two buttons:

Bake layer stack: This bakes the current layer stack to the output vertex group, allowing it to be edited destructively, similarly to how you might apply a modifier (as this is what is happening behind the scenes). Note that this only happens on the object that you apply the layer stack on, and other objects with the same layer stack will remain interactive.
Enable/Disable visibility: Whether to show the effects of this layer stack on the object.

Below the layer stack list, you can see the layer stack selector. It has these options (from left to right):

Layer stack selector: Allows you to choose which layer stack to apply to this slot.
Name: The display name of this layer stack
Copy layer stack: Creates an exact copy of this layer stack, and selects it.
New layer stack: Creates a new default layer stack.
Remove layer stack: Delete this layer stack from the file.

Enable manual refresh mode

If a mesh is too heavy, and weight layers is slowing down, you can enable manual refresh mode.

This adds a large button that you can use to update the procedural effects manually. Note that this means that any painting you do on the output vertex groups will be overwritten when the layer stack is refreshed.

This also removes the option to bake and hide the layer stack, as these aren't possible when manual refresh is enabled

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