Remove Color
Remove Color takes every spot of a color you pick off a texture and fills it with the colors around it. It is the texture’s version of filling holes: the black slivers an AI-generated model paints into creases, dark specks, a stain. Pick the color, decide how close a shade still counts, and the spots blend into the surface around them.
Inputs
Section titled “Inputs”A textured mesh: an imported model, or one painted upstream.
Outputs
Section titled “Outputs”The same mesh with the color removed from every textured channel, filled from its surroundings.
Parameters
Section titled “Parameters”| Parameter | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
Apply to | Which faces the color is removed from: Everywhere, or a named selection. The fill still reads the colors just outside it. | Everywhere |
Color | The color to remove. The eyedropper reads the lit screen, so give Tolerance some room. | #000000 |
Tolerance | How close a color must be to the picked one to be fully removed. Raise it to include nearby shades (dark grays and browns for black). | 0.15 |
Falloff | Colors this much past Tolerance count as a spot's soft fringe: removed with the spot when they touch it, faded in proportion where they don't. | 0.2 |
Grow | Also removes everything within this distance of a spot: the faint last edge of its fringe. | 0.6 cm |
Fill with | What the removed texels are filled with. Average blends the colors around each one; Smooth fill lets the surrounding colors flow in, so a gradient carries straight through; Flat color paints one color you pick. Options: Average, Smooth fill, Flat color | Average |
Replace with | The color the removed texels show with Flat color. Shown when Fill with is Flat color. | #808080 |
Show matched | Tints what will be removed magenta instead of filling it, to tune Tolerance, Falloff and Grow. Turn it off when done. | Off |
How it works
Section titled “How it works”The node compares the color each texel shows (its base color plus any glow) with the color you picked. Tolerance sets how close a shade must be to be removed, measured the way the eye sees it, so 0.15 around black takes in near-blacks and 0.3 also dark grays and browns.
A spot rarely ends in a clean line: it fades through darker shades into the surface around it. Falloff covers that soft edge. Where those shades touch a spot they go with it, so no dark ring is left; where they don’t (dark shading elsewhere that merely looks similar) they are only faded in proportion. Grow takes the faint last bit of the edge too: everything within that distance of a spot.
Fill with decides what goes in the hole:
- Average gives each removed texel a weighted average of the untouched texels around it on the 3D surface. Near the edge of a spot that is the colors just outside it; in the middle of a larger spot it blends the whole surrounding ring. It is quick, and keeps a little of the texture’s local grain.
- Smooth fill lets the surrounding colors flow inward until every removed texel is the average of its neighbours. Shading that runs under the spot, like a gradient across skin, carries straight through and nothing marks where the spot was. Use it on smooth surfaces; on a very large spot it is a little slower.
- Flat color paints every removed texel the Replace with color: a deliberate recolor rather than a cleanup. The color is what the surface shows, so on an AI model that keeps its colors in the glow channel it goes into the glow, on an ordinary material into the base color, and where the surroundings mix the two it is split the same way. Roughness and metal take the values around the spot.
Because it works on the surface rather than in the image, it doesn’t matter how the texture is cut up, and a spot crossing a seam fills as one. Every textured channel (color, roughness and metal, glow) is filled together.
- Turn on Show matched first. It paints everything that will be removed magenta, so you can tune Tolerance, Falloff and Grow by eye. Turn it off when it looks right; the node warns while it is on.
- The node removes the color everywhere within Apply to. If the same color also belongs on the model (black eyes, a belt), select the area to fix and set Apply to to it. The fill still reads the colors just outside the selection, so the patch blends in.
- The color picker’s eyedropper reads the lit screen, not the stored texture, so a picked mid-tone can be slightly off. Raise Tolerance until Show matched covers the spot.
- A faint outline left where a spot was: raise Grow. Real dark detail next to a spot disappearing: lower Grow or Falloff.
See also
Section titled “See also”- Clean Color Edges: clean the wavy borders between two colors instead.
- Bake: its Fill hidden source option repaints the black spots a bake picks up from covered surfaces.
- AI mesh cleanup: the template that gives an AI model a clean, game-ready texture.
- Texture nodes: the other nodes that unwrap, paint and bake.