Region Bands

Overview

Generates regions by dividing the canvas into directional bands. Use it to create regular flowing surfaces such as depth levels in water, a sunset sky, or terrain height layers. For cracks and disruptions, use its sibling region_strata.

Usage tips

• The go-to background recipe is region_bands(Horizontal, band_count=4–8) → region_fill with a gradient-like sequence of colors. This separates water depth, sky, or strata into colored levels.
• Control boundary variation with jitter and frequency. With jitter=0 the bands are ruler-straight; increasing it creates more natural waves. Frequency controls how fine those waves are.
• Diagonal directions (DiagonalDown / DiagonalUp) also work for light rays, rain, and a sense of speed.

Related nodes

• region_strata — strata with cracks and separations
• region_fill — assign colors to bands
• region_border / region_boundary_trace — extract boundaries
• region_warp — distort the entire set of bands

Directly generates a banded RegionMap at the final size in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal directions. It is suited to strata, water depth, steps, and directional surface divisions in backgrounds.

Key parameters

How to use

1. Set width / height to match the final image.
2. Choose direction to match the terrain or water-depth flow.
3. Adjust band_count and jitter, then connect to Region Merge Small or Region Boundary Trace if needed.

When mask is connected, bands are generated only inside the active mask area and the outside is treated as OUTSIDE. Pixels where lightness * alpha >= 0.5 are active. An arbitrary mask shape takes priority, so wrap_x / wrap_y are disabled in the output while a mask is connected.

This node creates more regular bands than Region Strata. Use it when water depth, terrain height steps, or background direction should make the surface flow easy to read. Use Region Strata when you need rocky cracks or interruptions partway through.