PRODUCT UPDATE / World building · PBR materials
Layer adds explorable worlds and PBR material tools
The October 12 update brings world generation and material-map exports into Layer. Worlds include separate splat, collider and panorama downloads; Blender can apply the PBR materials.
For environment teams preparing spatial references and material maps; exported collider geometry is coarse and untextured.
Layer's October 12 update adds explorable world generation and PBR material tools. One produces a space from text, images or video; the other produces texture maps for a game material. Together, they give environment teams separate paths for exploring a location and preparing its surfaces.
A scene you can explore and export
Create world takes a prompt, up to four images of the same scene, or a video. Video takes precedence if both kinds of reference are supplied. The viewer offers orbit and walk navigation, and Capture view saves a framed shot as an image for backgrounds, art references or a video's opening frame.
The world guide lists separate downloads for the Gaussian splat scene, a GLB collider and a PNG panorama, plus a ZIP containing the full world. Each has a different role. Splats require a compatible viewer or engine; the panorama can supply an environment background; the collider is coarse, untextured geometry for movement and physics.
These outputs can support layout exploration, camera framing and level blockout references. Production rendering geometry still needs to be built, and walk navigation depends on the collider's accuracy.
Materials leave with their maps
Create PBR materials takes a prompt or reference image. Repeating floors and walls need a model that supports tiling. Layer's material guide uses PATINA Tileable 1.0 as its example, with base color, normal, roughness, metalness, height and ambient-occlusion maps, plus packed maps for Unity and ORM workflows.
The viewer displays materials on a sphere, cube or plane and lets artists inspect individual maps. Downloads contain the PNG maps and a manifest describing them. Importing into a project still requires the appropriate shader channels and normal-map convention.
The update also brings Generate PBR materials into Blender to apply a material to selected objects. The file-format documentation says the add-on builds a Principled BSDF material from the archive and converts DirectX normals. Layer's Blender add-on requires Blender 4.5 or later.
Generation draws from Creative Units
World and material runs spend the workspace's Creative Units, with the cost determined by the model and output settings. The run button shows an estimate. Work performed by the chat agent can incur usage in addition to the assets it generates. Amounts visible in documentation examples are not fixed prices for every task.
Teams with a Layer workspace can start from the relevant tool. For other environment tools, browse the world and level building category or the Layer tool record.
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