This is an eBook, so the product is the documentation!

What is Covered

We’ll be looking at the Node Editor, in particular, material nodes, and how you can understand how they are put together from a high-level, so that you can break them down into their components to make it easier to modify them.

I cover the different coordinate systems that all materials use to map themselves onto an object mesh as these start all materials and therefore are the root of most confusion. This, I hope, will be a well worn reference to many. I wish I had it when learning.

I cover the most useful nodes and in particular their output ranges, and I look at explaining math nodes and why they are used.

In the middle of the document, I look at a lot of examples of material nodes, especially procedural ones, illustrating how to trace values through them or display visually how they are built up, and show tricks to decipher very large material node trees that look over-whelming.

Finally, I offer a reference to texture and shader nodes, as I always found it hard to remember all the different variations that are possible. Hopefully, this will help new blenderheads understand material nodes and keep a quick reference nearby and useful.

What this Book Isn’t

This is not Blender Materials 101 - that is, I’m not going to create materials nor show the process of material creation. There are better sources for that. I’m not going to repeat the Blender online manual or other well-known resources. My sole aim is to help you understand how to read node trees: understand how they work from a high to medium level, and be able to identify their key nodes so you can successfully modify the material to suit your project’s needs.