It seems you can create a layer mask with just an image that you plug into the frac of another node. Allegedly the layer weight node is used to mix shaders, but if you can do that with just a single image, what is it for exactly?
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layer weight is good for ghosts, holograms, microbes and magical orbs
here i used someones elses Nodevember nodes that used some layer weight for a hologram
its just a utility node… i think i heard somewhere that the falloff of the layer weight node is different from the fresnel node…
it’s to give a variation on the part of your object where the normals are perpendicular to your view.
For example typically for velvet (if you mix Glossy with Diffuse and use a Fresnel or Layer Weight as factor, it will bring gloss to the edges), or as bebop says, to make special effects like ghost, but it’s also often used for a lot of material like plastics, etc… Also, Fresnel is already implemented in the Principled BSDF.
It looks like Fresnel is more contrasted than LW’s Facing but you can also modify its influence with a ColorRamp
It’s described in the manual:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/input/layer_weight.html
Okay, I suppose I can see that. Does it need to be normals though? Can you not vary the angle at all like over some range? Instead of normals, could it be all angles between like 40 degrees and 80 degrees or something like that?
try to put a ColorRamp between the Layer Weight and the Mix Shader, you’ll be able to control what happens at a given range. Note that you can add as many colors as you want on the ColorRamp (here you only b&w). There might be other solutions but I don’t know them…