Node view
The same material laid out as a node graph, the way Redshift, Octane and Blender's shader editor lay one out. Wire patterns and images into any channel.
Open the Material panel and press Node view in its header. The material opens as a graph: a Standard Material node feeding an Output, with a socket for each channel, colour coded by what it carries, and wires flowing left to right.
If you have built a material in Cinema 4D or Blender, you already know how to use it.
It is the same material
The node view is not a second material beside the first. An unconnected socket reads and writes the same value as the slider in the panel: move the slider and the socket moves, type in the socket and the slider moves.
Wire something into a socket and the graph takes that channel over. The panel marks that dial as driven by nodes rather than pretending it still decides. Pull the wire out and the dial has its old value back.
Nothing changes for a material that has never been near the node view.
The nodes
| Kind | Nodes |
|---|---|
| Sources | Image, Noise, Cells, Checker, Gradient, Coordinates, Colour, Number |
| Adjust and combine | Mix, Maths, Ramp, Levels, Hue and Saturation, Relief, Split, Combine |
| Material | Standard Material, Output |
- Image takes a picture: click the empty node or drop a file onto it. Its sockets take Coordinates for tiling, and Strength and Gamma, so a mask can drive how strongly the image reads. Invert is in its settings.
- Coordinates tiles and offsets whatever it feeds.
- Relief turns a height pattern into bumps.
Working with the graph
| Do this | To |
|---|---|
| Drag from a socket to another | Connect them |
| Drag from an empty socket into space | Pick a node to place, already connected |
| Drag a wire off a socket into space | Unplug it |
| Double click a wire | Unplug it |
| Right click a wire or a node | See what you can do with it |
| Select a node | See its settings in the panel on the right |
Selecting the Standard Material node lists the material's own settings, grouped the way the Material panel groups them, because they are the same settings.
Good to know
- Every change is one undo step, and the graph saves and syncs with the rest of the material.
- A graph that works out to plain numbers stays plain numbers. A graph that varies across the surface is drawn into a texture once, then reused, so a busy graph does not slow the scene down.
- Applying a different material from the Library replaces the graph with that material's. A graph belongs to the material it was built on.
- A texture set applied from the Library opens in the node view as Image nodes, already wired to the channels they fill.