Height Mixer Node

Blend shaders the physically accurate way.

The Height Mixer Node uses height data to blend materials naturally creating smooth, layered and production-ready surfaces in Blender.

Blender 4.2+ EEVEE Cycles
Real-time shader blending by height

Why Height Mixer?

Brick shader height mixer node

Traditional shader mixing relies on flat masks or factor inputs, which often produce unnatural transitions.

The Height Mixer Node uses height information to drive blends, producing layered, realistic results that behave like real-world material buildup.

Layering, Chaining & Baking

Stack Height Mixer nodes for complex multi-layer materials (e.g. soil → rock → moss). When ready, bake the blended maps for optimal performance or easy export to game engines.

Fine-Tuned Controls

Parameters designed for artists:

Height: Relative height of the top layer from the base.

Expand: Control spread/overlap of the top layer.

Smoothing: Soften transitions for natural results.

ShrinkWrap: Make the top layer wrap onto the surface below.

Opacity Map: Apply local masks or decals.

Invert: Invert the direction of the blending

Displacement controls: Optionally tweak displacement strength for each layer.

Vertex paint: Activate vertex painting

Bake: Input map for baking

Blender height mixer node

Vertex Paint integration

brush icon

Use vertex colors to paint blending zones directly in the viewport for precise artistic control - great for terrain authoring or targeted masking.

Mud vertex painting

Decals Mixing

Blend decals with your materials, perfect for adding details without breaking realism.

Control the direction of decal interaction:

Outward decals add surface buildup such as stickers, paint, or debrit layers.

Inward decals carve into the surface for engravings, cracks or damages.

Fine-Tune with vertex painting to locally refine your decal blending.

Custom Masking

Use the opacity map input of the Height Mixer Node to drive custom masking.

Custom masking

Integrate to your workflow

Add details to your environement scenes

height mixer node easy setup
Just plug your shaders into a Height Mixer Node.
height mixer node infinite layering
Stack your shaders to be as complex as you want.
height mixer node bake
Bake Maps for lightweight or game engines.
height mixer node no displacement
Get convincing height-aware blending even without displacement.