Blender's Texture Paint mode has one big limitation that anyone coming from Photoshop or Substance Painter notices in the first ten minutes: there are no layers. You paint straight onto one image. If you want to change your mind about a rust pass after painting grime on top of it, your options are undo (which runs out), painting over it by hand, or leaving Blender to fix it elsewhere and re-importing a baked texture. That round trip is the real cost, because every time you leave the 3D viewport you lose the feedback loop of painting directly on the model.
Texture Paint Layers, by blenderustad, brings a non-destructive, Photoshop-style layer stack straight into Blender's own Texture Paint mode. Layers, masks, blend modes and a full set of PBR channels, all without leaving the viewport.
Texture Paint Layers is available on Superhive.
Native Texture Paint vs Texture Paint Layers
The clearest way to see what changes is side by side. This comparison is based on the creator's own listing:
| Capability | Native Texture Paint | Texture Paint Layers |
|---|---|---|
| Layer stack | Single flat image, no layers | Create, reorder, hide, duplicate and delete layers |
| Undoing a bad pass | Undo history, or repaint by hand | Toggle or delete one layer, the rest is untouched |
| Channels | One image at a time | Color, Roughness, Metallic, Height and Normal on every layer |
| Masking | No per-layer mask | Paintable grayscale mask per layer, with an enable toggle |
| Blend modes | None | 9 modes, from Multiply and Overlay to Lighten |
| Flattening | Not applicable | Merge Down bakes two layers into one image |
| File portability | One image per texture slot | Layers, channels and masks packed into the .blend |
A Layer Stack Inside the Viewport
You get a Layers panel in the Image Editor sidebar (N, then Layers) and a matching panel in the 3D View sidebar while a mesh is in Texture Paint mode. Layers can be created, renamed, duplicated, deleted, reordered, hidden, cleared and merged, and the material on screen updates live as you work. It also automatically switches Solid or Wireframe shading to Material Preview when you enter Texture Paint, so transparency in your layers is actually visible.
Paint Layers and Fill Layers
Each entry in the stack is one of two kinds. A Paint Layer starts fully transparent, so you can paint scratches, grime or detail exactly where you want it and nothing else changes. A Fill Layer starts as opaque white with a single color control, which makes it the right tool for a base tint or a flat color pass you will paint into later. Both kinds sit in the same stack, and both support masks, opacity and blend modes.
Five PBR Channels on Every Layer
This is what separates it from a simple color-layer plugin. Every layer carries five channels: Color, Roughness, Metallic, Height and Normal. Each is independent, with compact toggle buttons so you can enable only what that layer needs. Color is on by default, Normal is off by default.
- Roughness and Metallic use their own 0 to 1 sliders that never touch Blender's brush color or your palette, so switching from a color pass to a roughness pass does not scramble your brush setup.
- Height uses a signed value: -1 paints depth, 0 flattens relief back to neutral, and +1 paints a raised bump. Fill Layers use a Depth scale instead. Height changes bump shading only and does not displace the mesh.
One Stroke, Every Enabled Channel
With the Draw brush and solid Fill brushes, one stroke commits to every enabled channel on that layer at once, using the native brush footprint, pressure and strength. Paint a scratch and its color, its roughness break and its height dent all land in a single pass, instead of four separate passes on four separate images. Channels you have switched off are left untouched.
Masks and Nine Blend Modes
Every layer can carry one grayscale mask, either a white reveal mask or a black hide mask, with its own Paint Value slider and an Enable Mask toggle so you can bypass it without deleting it. Layers composite using image alpha, opacity and a choice of nine blend modes: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Add, Subtract, Difference, Darken and Lighten. It is the same vocabulary painters already know from Photoshop and Substance Painter. Source pixels are never changed by visibility, opacity, blending or masking, only the final composite is, which is what makes the whole approach non-destructive.
UV Transformations Per Channel
Color, Roughness, Metallic, Height and Normal each have their own collapsible UV Transformations section, with linked or independent scale, rotation in degrees and offset, and images tile outside the 0 to 1 UV range. You can reposition or re-tile a texture on one channel without repainting or re-unwrapping anything, and the settings save with the .blend and carry over when you duplicate a layer.
Merge Down When You Are Ready
When a stack gets deep, Merge Down bakes a layer and the one beneath it into a single new editable image, keeping the destination layer's name and resetting it to Normal blend mode at full opacity. It lets you flatten part of a stack on your own schedule without collapsing layers you still want to edit. Merging requires the two layers to share the same image dimensions and a compatible color space.
How It Fits Into Your Material
The addon writes the layer composite straight into your material's node graph, feeding a Normal Map node and a Bump node automatically, and it keeps your existing Base Color as the foundation when the stack is empty. Layer, channel and mask images are packed into the .blend file on save, so one file carries everything. The creator states it supports Blender 4.2 and newer, including Blender 5's unified paint settings and linked asset brushes.
See It in Action
The creator's own video shows the workflow inside Blender, which is the fastest way to judge whether the layer stack feels right for the way you paint.
Video by Ustad Digital, the creator of Texture Paint Layers. Not made by BeingAnimator.
If you want a simpler texture painting workflow, with one-click UV unwrap and several paint modes, see our own post on the Easy Texture Paint addon. And if you are placing the painted assets into a bigger scene, our picks for Botaniq Trees and Humaniq cover the vegetation and people.
Real-World Uses
- Hard-surface and weapon texturing. Stack a base metal fill, a color tint, and separate dust, scratch and wear layers, each with its own mask, and judge every pass on its own before baking anything together.
- Game-ready props. Paint Color, Roughness, Metallic, Height and Normal per layer on the model, then merge the stack down to flat images for export once the look is locked.
- Character skin and surface detail. Layer freckles, scars or dirt over a base skin tone using masks and blend modes, without ever repainting the base.
- Client revisions. Toggle a layer to show a before and after, or drop it entirely, without redoing the layers around it.
- Learning PBR texturing. Painting each channel on its own toggle, with instant viewport feedback, is a good way to understand how the channels affect the final material.
- Staying in Blender. Skip the export, texture externally, re-import cycle that painters use Substance Painter for.
What It Does Not Do
The creator is upfront about the limits, and they are worth knowing before you buy:
- It needs Eevee or Cycles with a top-level Principled BSDF. Custom shader graphs are not rewired automatically.
- Height paints bump shading, not geometry displacement.
- Normal blending uses standard RGB compositing rather than a specialized normal-blending algorithm.
- Merging two layers needs matching image dimensions and a compatible color space.
It is also a first release, published just before this article, so expect it to keep evolving. Because the listing shows no reviews yet, it is worth reading the documentation linked on the Superhive page and watching the video before you decide.
Price and Compatibility
Texture Paint Layers costs $29 on Superhive at the time of writing and is a GPL add-on that is compatible with the Blender Extensions system. The description says it supports Blender 4.2 and newer, while the version field on the listing reads 3.3 to 5.2, so if you use an older Blender, confirm with the creator first. Prices change with sales, so check the product page for the current figure.
Who This Is For
- Texture artists who want a real layer stack without leaving Blender.
- Hard-surface and prop artists who paint wear, dust and scratches in separate passes.
- Game artists who need Color, Roughness, Metallic, Height and Normal to stay in sync.
- Anyone who has painted themselves into a corner and wished for a way back.
Who Should Think Twice
If your materials are fully custom node setups rather than a Principled BSDF, the automatic wiring will not apply. If you need true displacement or a specialized normal-map blending algorithm, this is not aimed at that. And if you want a mature, heavily reviewed tool, wait for reviews to build up, since this one is new.
If you have ever painted a texture, hated a decision, and had nowhere to go but undo, a layer stack inside Texture Paint mode is the missing feature. It is a new release, but the concept is proven in every other painting tool you have used.
Texture Paint Layers is available on Superhive.