Why Layer and Blender work well together
Blender is the most widely used open-source 3D creation suite, powering workflows from indie game development to film production. Its flexibility across modeling, texturing, animation and rendering means artists constantly need assets: base meshes to start from, textures for materials, reference images, environments and motion. Layer generates all of them, and the Layer add-on puts that generation inside Blender, working on the scene you already have open.
The add-on is a native Blender extension. Its sidebar tab holds your account, your workspace and the session this file's work is filed under. Its tools and its agent open from a button in the 3D viewport, next to the work, and everything they make lands in the scene: meshes as geometry at the 3D cursor, textures as materials on the selected objects, images and clips on planes. Nothing is downloaded, unzipped and imported by hand.
For game artists and freelance artists who use Blender as their main 3D tool, that removes the round trip between a browser and the viewport. For indie game developers working solo or in small teams, it means production-quality base meshes and materials without leaving the file they are building.
Mesh generation and the mesh tools
Mesh generation creates a model at the 3D cursor from a description, from an image, or from several views of one subject. The result is real geometry in the scene, ready to select, edit and render like anything else in the file.
The rest of the mesh tools work on the selected object. Retexture gives a mesh new textures from a description or a reference image. Remesh rebuilds its topology, UV unwrap lays out new UVs, and Segment splits it into separate parts. Rig gives a character mesh a skeleton, and Animate rigs a character and moves it from a description of the motion or a clip of it.
A typical character design pass starts from a generated mesh for proportions and silhouette, retextures it until the materials read right, then rigs it for posing, all without exporting a file. Generated meshes make strong base geometry that artists refine with Blender's sculpting and modeling tools for production.
Textures and materials
The Texture tool generates a seamless texture from a description or a reference and applies it as a material to the selected objects. It works across Blender's render engines, and because the texture repeats without a visible seam it holds up across the large surfaces environment art is made of: floors, walls, terrain, trim.
Environment generates a panorama and sets it as the world's environment texture, so a scene gets sky and lighting that match its mood in one step. For look development, generate several texture variations for the same material, render each in the final lighting, and let an art director choose in an afternoon rather than a week of hand painting.
Images, references and video in the scene
Image generation puts an image on a plane at the 3D cursor, from a description, from references, or from the viewport itself. That makes concept art and modeling references part of the scene: generate a character sheet, model against it, and keep it in the file for the next artist.
The image tools edit what is already there. Prompt edit changes the image on a selected plane by describing the change, Change camera angle shows its subject from another angle, and Upscale and Remove background work in place. Video generation creates clips from a description, an image or the scene camera's move, and Restyle render renders the scene's animation through the viewport and restyles the clip, which turns a blockout into a styled previs shot for concept artists and creative directors.
The agent in your scene
The agent is Layer's assistant, working on the open scene. Ask it to put the chest on a stone floor and light it for dusk, and it reads the scene, generates the textures it needs, and builds the floor and the light through Blender's Python API. It can also search Blender's own documentation when it needs to know how something works.
It asks before it changes anything, once per session for each kind of change, and every change goes onto Blender's undo stack. Each request's work goes into a collection of its own, so it is easy to find, keep or delete. The conversation stays with the session, so you can pick it up again later.
Files, sessions and your pipeline
Everything the add-on generates is filed under a session named after your .blend, the same sessions you see at layer.ai, so work started in Blender can be reviewed in the browser and the other way round. Which session a file uses is stored inside the .blend, so it survives renames, moves and version control.
Generated files are saved beside the .blend in a layer folder, referenced by relative paths, and re-homed on the first save of a new file. When you need one self-contained file, pack everything into the .blend from the sidebar.
For studios shipping to Unity or Unreal Engine, Blender stays the authoring tool and exports as it always has. Studios that also use Maya or Photoshop share one Layer workspace, one catalogue of models and one pool of Creative Units across all of them. For batch pipelines, the Layer API runs the same generations headless.
For models to bring into Blender, see 3D models from four views, PBR 3D models and rigging 3D models.