WELCOME TO THE NO TYPE overview.
In this video you will look at the nodes that are created for the textures we'll learn about the different
types of connection points and what the coloured dots are and which ones beat can be connected together
and what they would do.
So let's hop straight on over into a blender.
Right so over in blender.
If you've not caught one already I'd like you to open up a window.
That is the No.
ED see using this selection tool on the head a bar of any of the other windows.
I'm split mine in two just here and I'm going to switch it to the node editor.
Once you switch it to the node editor on the outliner itself you'll want to select one of the grass
blades that we've been using.
And over in the node editor itself you should see three items.
Now they're very small at the moment you can zoom in and out just like you can your 3D model.
In fact a lot of what you've done before will apply to here.
So if you need to duplicate something you can if you need to move it around you do exactly the same
thing as you would do with your model and geometry.
So let's explore these nodes we have in front of us we have three nodes here all doing different things
and there are quite a few notes to pick from.
So first of all let's talk about the colours these dots that are based on all of the nodes and they
all do slightly different things.
And one important point to make here as you can see the image textured node is highlighted orange at
the moment.
That's the selected node.
So the properties panel on the right hand side are going to shut it down in a moment to give me some
space or some more space anyway.
Now I do notice that use Alpha is ticked on the image and that is important because we need to use the
alpha channel to make sure that the background eventually of this grass blade becomes transparent.
So I'm going to give myself a little bit more space here.
By shutting down the properties panel of the node editor and you can use the N key to do that all the
little plus that exists here.
So there we go.
We've now got a bigger view.
And at the top here come scan to make this a little bigger.
So we can see what's going on.
And I'm going to view the thing we want to view which and then have to scroll down here and view selected.
And I'm going to switch into material mode an hour I'm not not selected on the layer.
So now I'm selected on the right layer now I can go view and view selected on a number pad full stop.
If you've got a number pad attached and here we go here's our our texture that we're working on.
So what do all of these colours mean.
Well let's have a look at the colour one first of all.
So the colour ones are all yellow.
And you can see that one is on the right hand side and one is on the left hand side.
And when you're connecting nodes you would generally only connect ones on an output side to the right
hand side of a node to the left hand side the input side of a node together.
So here we can see the colour is going from here to here.
So what does that yellow colour indicate.
Well it indicates that there are three values coming out of it's a red a green and a blue there.
They make up the colours.
So if we plug a yellow into a yellow it can receive all three bits of those colours without any loss.
Now if we were to plug it into a grey node those three values would be averaged out because a grey node
is just a single value.
Finally purple node is also three values and they usually do vectors or coordinates.
Now all of these things can be plugged into one another but sometimes it makes no sense to do so.
But we're going to explore how they're all connected together.
So just Siri iterate there's so a grey node like this alpha node here contains one value.
So let's play for a little bit let's plug the alpha channel into the colour instead.
So there's one value coming out of here and we can see that the image is turned into black and white.
And I'm in material mode at the moment.
If you were in rended mode it would look black and grey.
But that's because the lighting is determining the level of this whiteness here.
So I'm going to switch back in to material on the viewport shading so we can see that this is coming
through to the colour.
And because Alpha only outputs a value per pixel by the way.
So each one of these pixels has an individual value.
And this is 1024 by a thousand and 24 so there's a lot of information coming through there but that's
a single value coming through and being plugged into a colour channel.
And what that will do is set all three values in the colour channel to one single value so if the Alpher
was black as it is here a value of zero all of the red green blue channels on the colour would be also
set to zero.
If the alpha channel was one i.e. white then what we will or have is the red green and blue all at the
value of 100 percent and that would make it white.
And that's why we're seeing it here.
Now when we plug the colour to the colour we get all of the R G B Red Green Blue values coming through.
Now you can do some very strange things when you're linking them together but in general you will not
always want to connect the same colour time together.
It will depend on what you're doing and the final colour that we've not dealt with yet is these green
blobs here now that they represent a shader Now that represents a description of how light will interact
with the surface or volume.
Now this in general should only really be connected to other green sockets but there are certain cases
where you may not want them so yellow and purple can be connected together without any loss of information
because they both contain at least three values r.g. B and probably X Y Z.
So they're pretty much the same under the hood.
Now Grey now that can be connected to yellow or purple without any loss of information because all three
values will be the same value as we've discussed when you play the Alpha Arin you get rgv of 1 or 0
in this case and the yellow and purple can be connected to grey.
But they will be averaged out.
So that's worthwhile knowing that connecting a yellow or purple to a grey node will average it out and
thus be losing some information.
Now it all depend on the application you're using.
But that can make a great difference.
Now interestingly when we link the owl for channel to the colour we will see that it does go black and
white.
And this enables us to create what's called a mask we can cover up certain parts of our image.
So that will allow us to make the background that was currently being shown as black transparence.
So in order to control the node editor itself you can use a lot of your prior knowledge that you have
using the 3D editor window.
So for instance if you need to add something.
We do have an ADD menu down here or you can use Shift A brilliant.
There's also a powerful search tool as well.
If you know what something is called.
Now when you go to add a node I will just go and add one.
Now let's go in.
Add anything at random colour mix.
RG And let's see what we get there so we can have as you can see it's got three inputs someone output
it outputs a colour based upon a value and two colours coming in.
Okay so it could be two textures coming in and then something else coming out.
Brilliant So that's a great way of mixing things there if I didn't want that.
I got the wrong thing.
I can press X and it will delete it's just like you can delete things in the 3D window.
There's also a search function as I just mentioned which allows you to search for things that you might
want.
So when we type in makes we get the mix.
RG be that we've just seen again and I can select that and add it in to our scene again and I'm going
to delete that again with the x key.
So a very powerful way of finding what you want.
Unfortunately some things are hidden away.
So for instance I know there's something called a multiply.
So if I go in and type multi nothing comes up.
Now the reason for that is it's hidden in another node and it changes the title of that node so under
converter there's something called maths.
And when we have that you can see at the moment it's called ADD.
But if we change it to something else it changes its name based upon this value here.
So as worthwhile bearing in mind sometimes you have to know what the shader is called in order to search
for it.
But it's not always going to be called the function you're using it for a okay.
So armed with those few bits of knowledge I've got a small challenge for you.
I would like you to add some notes.
So we need to tell blender that when light hits a black part of the image it needs to treat it as transparent.
So that's how light interacts with the surface at the node you'd use for that.
Then add a node that would mix the two different shaders together.
Clues in the name.
Use the alpha channel of the texture image control control the mix between the shaders.
And play with the connections and see how it effects the image to gain a better understanding of what
is happening.
Finally expect it to take a few minutes of linking things together and playing to work out the connections.
Hint very important here you only actually two additional shader modes supporter video now.
Challenge yourself and give that a go.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Now the solution to this one is going to be in the next lecture because I'm going to do a bit of playing
and a bit of further expansion on what you've done so I'll see you guys shortly in the next lecture.
Take care.