If you’re like me, it’s all still pretty overwhelming. Here are a couple of newbie observations (perhaps even rising to the level of insights) that might prove useful:
1: Color Ramp: I just noticed that the bar with the flags (roughly) demonstrates the behavior of chosen interpolation type. This provides a useful visual cue that can help inform the decision of what interpolation type is best, even if you don’t have each mode’s behavior memorized just yet.
2: Node networks look like wizardry to me, but today I had a small breakthrough: Simplify my thinking/conceptualization of a branch by focusing on the branch’s main goal. For example, the scratches each contain 4 nodes: a noise texture node, two mapping nodes, and color ramp. That is a lot to my eye and brain. So, take a moment to identify what the branch’s main goal is, and which node acts as the driver toward that goal. In this example, the goal is to make scratches, and the main driver is the texture node. The mapping nodes and color ramp exercise control over the noise texture, but the noise texture is the star of that branch. So I will think of that branch as a ’Noise texture branch.’
This is obvious to the pro’s, but a new way of thinking for me. Maybe going forward, I’ll start taking the extra time to label the branches to reinforce this way to seeing the tree.
3: Kent casually tossed out a gem: linear light is a strong effect, that provides a broad spectrum: white to black, with plenty of greys in between.
To my mind, he’s hinting at a larger design principle/question that will be asked 1,000 times: Do I want definitive areas of effect/color/texture? Or do I want a soft blend of effect/color/texture? How broad of a gradient do I want in my effects/colors/textures?
Deliberately asking these questions, and having a preliminary answer will help drive decisions while choosing an interpolation type. And if you can’t remember which interpolation type does what, see Note 1!
4: 117:00 we’re looking at roughness. I’d like to offer a summary of what I heard.
Low values = Clear reflections, while High values = Duller reflection. We use a Color Ramp for more control over these values. Essentially, we are translating those values to the colors black and white, respectively. Opening the color wheel, we see black has a value of zero, where white has a value of one. By extension, grabbing the black flag (low value) is manipulating the influence of the clearer reflections, and grabbing the white flag (high value) is controlling the influence of the duller reflections.
I hope these are useful for someone else. They feel like growth to me.
Eric
Hey Eric!
Awesome observations, and Kudos for sharing your thoughts.
Nodes can seem like wizardry and be quite daunting when starting to learn them. It's one of those areas that can take many, many hours of practice, and a lot of patience.
Using the Node Wrangler add-on, specifically the SHIFT + CTRL + Click combo on any node in the node tree to view the output to that point is very useful to start to understand what and how nodes work.
Keep Practicing, Keep Blending! 🍪