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Description

This class allows you to manipulate material layers. A layer can contain 0 or more BSDF components, an optional emitter component and an optional displacement component. There can only be one displacement component active on the material at a given time, so the material attributes class allows you to specify which layer provides the active displacement. See this section in the main manual for further details on how layers work.

Texturable attributes: opacity (AttrType_Double). When this attribute is textured, the scalar value acts as a multiplier for the values sampled from the texture.

Base class: MaxwellMayaMaterialComponent.

Methods

void Destroy()

Destroys the layer, removing it from the parent material.

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Set or get the name which will be displayed for this layer in Maxwell Studio or in the material editor.

MaxwellMayaBSDF* AddBSDF()

Creates and returns a new BSDF component.

unsigned int GetNumBSDFs() const

Returns the number of BSDF components currently present in this layer. This method does not exist in Python.

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Return the BSDF at the given index, or NULL if the index is invalid. In Python, this method is replaced with GetBSDFs, which takes no arguments returns a list of all the BSDFs in the layer.

MaxwellMayaEmitter* CreateEmitter()

Creates and returns a new emitter component. If the layer already contains an emitter, returns NULL in C++ or raises maxwell.ParameterError in Python.

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Returns the emitter component for the layer. If there is no emitter, the C++ version returns NULL and the Python version returns None.

bool HasEmitter() const

This is a convenience method which allows you to check if an emitter component is present. It is equivalent to checking if GetEmitter returns NULL, but you don't have to worry about managing the returned pointer in case there is an emitter and you only wanted to check its existence. This method does not exist in Python, where the object returned by GetEmitter is managed automatically by the garbage collector.

void RemoveEmitter()

Removes the emitter component, if any. The Python version will raise maxwell.ParameterError if no emitter is present.

MaxwellMayaDisplacement* CreateDisplacement()

Creates and returns a new displacement component. If the layer already contains a displacement component, returns NULL in C++ or raises maxwell.ParameterError in Python.

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Returns the displacement component. If there is no displacement, the C++ version returns NULL and the Python version returns None.

bool HasDisplacement() const

Convenience method for checking if the layer contains a displacement component. This method does not exist in Python. The reason why it exists in C++ is the same as for the HasEmitter method documented above.

void RemoveDisplacement()

Removes the displacement component, if any. The Python version will raise maxwell.ParameterError if no displacement is present.

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Layers can be disabled, in which case they do not contribute to the material in any way.

Attribute name: enabled (AttrType_Bool).

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There are two possible blending modes for the layers:

• BlendMode_Normal: the resulting value is layer*opacity + existing*(1 - opacity).
• BlendMode_Additive: additive blending, where the existing value is not multiplied by (1 - opacity).

Attribute name: blendMode (AttrType_Int).