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I'm in the last chance saloon and I can't figure this out. I'm trying to create an edge mask that will softly blend out an animated bubble displacement texture. I've created the bubble displacement on a plane which is phasing through the textures z axis via a controller linked to an empty. The problem is that the edge of the plane is clipping the animation. I need the animating bubbles to softly falloff before the edge of the plane so I can seamlessly place in situ in the environment.

The bubbles have been created via modifiers. I will be rendering this through Eevee and not cycles, just in case you need that enter image description hereinfo.

Hope that make sense. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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You could create a vertex group and then in wait paint mode, paint a gradient onto those vertices, and then use that vertex group in the displacement modifier.

Wait Paint Displacement Modifier Final Result

For an All-Modifier Approach that doesn't require any editing the actual plane

They way you can mask out the edges is by creating a mask texture in texture paint mode with white all around the edges of the plane. Then you can use that along with a Vertex Weight Edit modifier placed before the "Texture" vertex weight edit modifier you already have to remove the edge areas from the vertex group.

First, copy your "Texture" modifier and move the copy up to come first. New Vertex Weight Edit Modifier

Then, go into Texture Pain mode and turn off all your modifiers so that you can see what you're doing better. Then, go into the "Active Tool" tab of the Properties editor, and under "Texture Slots" set the Mode to "Single Image" and press "New" Name it something like "Texture Mask." You should then see a black image appear in the Image Editor and the plane in the 3D view should also turn black (make sure you're in solid view instead of material view. That threw me off at one point). Then paint a white edge around the plane.

Texture Paint

Next, switch to weight paint mode and turn on the "VertexWeightEdit.001" modifier you copied from the "Texture" modifier. You should now see a bunch of spots on the blue plane. Now, go into Texture tab of the Properties editor.

Make sure the modifier is set to the correct one (VertexWeightEdit.001). Then click the "2" next to the name of the texture. Create a copy of the texture

Then, set the Type to "Image or Movie" and choose the "Texture Mask" image you created earlier. Then, go back into your modifiers and change the VertexWeightEdit.001 modifier's Texture Coordinate from "Object" to "UV". Also, select "Group Remove" and set the Remove Threshold to 1. You should now see your mask appearing in red against blue on your plane.

Vertex Group

Finally, turn on all your modifiers, and everything should be working properly.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi Elliot, I did try that but I had to subdivide the mesh before painting the weighting on. My modifier stack starts with a subdivision to get the geometry started, I just don't apply it, which i why i cant weight paint on the plane to start with...did that make sense :/ Can you use a texture as a weight paint? and can you still use that within the modifier stack? I've never worked with modifiers this way so i'm having to learn fast. Thanks for your reply btw. $\endgroup$
    – Sinzalot
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:22
  • $\begingroup$ @Sinzalot Ah, okay. What I did was first apply a low-poly subdivision surface modifier and then add a second one on top of that, but I'll try to figure out how you could do it without applying any modifiers. In the mean time, though, you could just go into edit mode and subdivide it once by adding two perpendicular edge loops and assigning the center vertex to the modifier, but that doesn't give you too much control over how it looks. $\endgroup$
    – ElliotThomas
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:26
  • $\begingroup$ Elliot, Yeah i just did a weight test by dividing first, the vertex group worked in the displacement modifier but then it throws everything else off. Is there a way of me uploading my scene to help? $\endgroup$
    – Sinzalot
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Sinzalot You can upload blender files through blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com $\endgroup$
    – ElliotThomas
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:49
  • $\begingroup$ <img src="https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/embedImage.png?bid=5kr6xpZx" /> $\endgroup$
    – Sinzalot
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 13:02

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