SoftMerge has been conceived to provide a softer merge for those operations that typically output a hard edge (for example: max, min, etc.), although it can be used for all the operations.

Another field of relevance for SoftMerge is to ease the merge of soft and out of focus objects. The tool works with BlinkScript under the hood.

It offers four controls:

1) Amount of the fade effect (inwards) along the A & B contact point. This fully respects the rgb while applying a gradual fade in.

2) Smooth the alpha (by default a linear progression) while still preserving the rgb intact.

3) Smooth the R, G, B values within the transition area.

4) Generate an alpha channel that represents this tool's operation.

(As usual, please share with me any feedback and feature requests).

Changelog:

• v1.1: Re-organization of functions.
• v1.2: Fixes to 'Replace Alpha' for certain operations.
• v1.3: Sorted a couple Expressions that misbehaved when duplicating this node and softer cull for the 'blur rgb' function.
• v1.4: Main bug in the 'Filler' operation (caused by illegal values).
• v1.5, 1.6: Small adjustments and refinements to the bounding box system.
• v1.7: Reworked UI, removed all callbacks and exported as an .nk file instead of a Gizmo.