Welcome to reusing shaders and materials.
In this video you will no longer have to keep making the same basic shaders and materials again and
again.
We often call for a basic wood a material plastic material a glass etc. and we have so far to create
it.
Every single time.
But wouldn't it be great if you could just pick from a library the moment you start working.
Of course it would be great.
So you'll learn how to start your own library of shaders and materials so you can access them whenever
you want.
And this also gives you the ability to continually improve your shaders and materials and add to them
as you grow as an artist.
So without any further ado let's hop straight on over in a blender.
Okay so in front of us we have the default blender file.
So let's go ahead and I'm going to get rid of my soft cube that's there an add in a sphere because it's
a lot neater and easier to work with.
Scroll up.
And I'm also going to shift it up on the z axis by a one blender unit.
I'm now going to create a plane to work on.
You can see the sort of standard workflow that I'm going through at the moment and repeatedly over and
over again.
Now I'm going to add a smooth shader to my sphere and I'm also going to subdivide it a couple of times
just to make it super smooth and click apply.
So that's a super smooth sphere on a floor.
Now going to hop into rended most straightaway and minimise this down we're going to create a standard
shader that we've created a couple of times already which is a mix between the gloss and a diffuse with
a friend Nell mix.
So let's go into the know.
Ed excellent that's ad material.
We don't have one.
We are on the plane at the moment.
Now the plane I do want to actually have something attached to it I want it to be a chequer.
So for the colour input I'm going to add and texture as the input a chequered texture.
And I have a plug that straight across.
Perfect.
I'm just going to race this scale that should make the squares smaller.
I'm going to go for 20.
There we go.
So you've got a kind of a surface for it to work on.
Right I'm happy with that.
Apart from we haven't named the material so I'm going to call this chequer floor.
I can just about see through my mike from the sky in front of me anyway.
So we've got now this sphere to do so let's.
That's not the spear that is the sphere that we've selected.
Okay so we've got a diffuse shade.
We need a gloss shader we need to mix those together so gloss not glue smoked glass.
Excellent.
Going to select them both and using control in 0 to mix them.
And then the final edition is the friend nail So let's go ahead and add in.
All right key combination helps friend.
Now there we go.
So that's a great start to that set up.
Now I want to be able to control this glossy shader with a bit more finesse.
In fact the glossy show there and that if you shave the roughness values.
So I'm going to lower down the roughness value here and just see what's going on.
Have we got the reflections that we want along the edges.
Yes we have that's absolutely fine.
So we're going to get on to making sure first of all that this shader is all grouped together appropriately.
Now one final thing I want to do is give myself a bit more control so I'm going to add in a maths node
plug the output value in both into both of those roughnesses and change that to power.
Case I am liking the set up here.
That is my basic set up son going to select all of the components that are with in this set up so all
the way from power all the way through for a nail diffuse glossy and mix shader and I use a shortcut
key we haven't grouped anything in a while but is control and she and that's going to put it into a
group.
Now whilst we're in this group we can start manipulating now.
The output is what comes out and the input is what we can.
What we actually can input control things.
So for instance here I might want to control the normals for everything.
I'll certainly want to control the value for everything.
That's why this isn't behaving quite right so we're going to have a value slider on the group input.
Now the problem with it just coming across as value is it says value over here.
That doesn't mean anything let's hop out of this group with the tab key and we can see we've just got
value.
It's exposed that control but because it's called value.
It's really no use to us whatsoever.
So go back into that group and change the name of that and we can do that in the properties panel if
it's not open press the N key to reveal it and we can see we've got Scott value here on the Imber and
we got a name there so set of calling it value we can call it roughness because that is essentially
what it's going to be controlling.
Now that's in there.
I'm also going to change the value of that too.
I can't remember what it was before.
Between 2 and 5 some may settle for 2.5 now.
Other ones that you may want later Ron are your normal maps so you can control things.
So I'm going to plug all of those into normal.
Okay.
And the final thing there I can see is the colour.
So we've got some control over the colour.
Now when we talk about we can see it's exposed the normal roughness and the colour sevi I lower the
roughness down to point 1.
It should end up a lot more glossy than it was before because should be passing on that point one across
and now I can change the colour as well so I can make this a red ball of a saying you can certainly
see the chequers in that much more easily okay you can see here it's actually having that fanelle value
applied properly because it's getting glossier and glossier towards the outside.
Excellent So there's one final thing to do here.
Before we do anything else and that is to name things appropriately.
This is currently called node group and that is no good at all.
So let's go ahead.
Properties panel here let's change node group to p.b. are plastic.
And so we've got this set up now.
Our plastic it's named it at the top.
So we should be good to go if we need to bring that in to another one of our scenes.
Now if we wanted to do this I'm going to save this file now single file save and I need it.
Call it something solona called it p b r.
Test.
Save the blender file.
Okay.
The final thing I want to just check here is my material itself is called material at 001 so I'm gonna
call this PBR plastic.
Cause what we can then do is penned this in two other scenes.
If we want to.
So let's go ahead and go file save.
And then actually start up a brand new blender far and we end up back here again.
So now we've done that beacon go to file a and to add it into this scene.
And if I go and find PBR test here we go.
There are two places we can visit if we want to bring the cross the material we can see the two materials
there check the floor and PBR plastic we can bring them straight into this scene.
If we only want to move the node group across and set up materials afresh each time we can go to node
tree and you see PBR plastic there.
Excellent.
Now once it's in the scene.
We will need to make sure it has a fake user otherwise or a real user of course.
But otherwise when you save your file it'll disappear.
And of course that leads us onto a challenge.
I would like you to start your library.
So go ahead and add two materials to your blender start file.
Remember the fake user.
Otherwise it will disappear.
Recommend.
I do recommend a pending so the original is in the start up far.
So if you've already created an awesome material in one of your other projects that you've been working
on you can actually now append it into this start up file so you can use it again and again and again
of course appending it means that the starter file is the source file it also means if you need to change
something you can change it in the starter file.
Just remember to save it save your start-up file to make sure that you've solidified that change.
The one thing I would impress upon you is remember what you're seeing on your screen at the moment.
You save your start-up file is exactly what's going to appear every time you start a brand new blender
file.
So make sure you sort things out and tidy up just before you hit back save.
Go ahead and also add to node groups to your start-up file.
So have you found yourself not only having to set up obviously repeats materials all the time but have
you also found yourself having to set up basic node groups again and again and again are you always
doing glossen to fuse in a mix shader.
Well why not group them together so you can just put them into your scene very quickly.
We've already seen that node Wrangler auret Automatically assigns a texture mapping with control in
t automatically adds those three nodes in there.
That's kind of like how this is going to work but only add useful things of this group rather than things
that take seconds to do.
Obviously we're practicing at the moment but later on you'll want to do this with more complicated things
so you don't have to keep setting it up.
Every single time.
Certainly speed up your work flow no end.
Finally consider anything you repeatedly had to set up over and over again.
It's important that this is not a shortcut to just doing something once or for a simple task.
This is a shortcut to stop you having to do the same thing repeatedly.
Now you might want to consider also in your scene a series of test objects to test out your materials
and demonstrate them.
Now you may also want to consider not putting these on Layer 1.
So if you need a preview in test materials you switch yourself over to one of the other layers so you
can work on it from there.
But if you just want to get on with your work you don't have to worry about removing those other objects
from the scene.
And of course hide them away if necessary as well.
In the outliner.
Put them under a an empty called Test objects or something like that so you can keep them out of the
way of being rendered accidentally so you can keep them out of the way in general aswell so borza video
this might take you a little while to practice and sort out and bring some new materials into your library
perhaps try a couple of textures as well in there perhaps rock or wood as two examples how you can do
your desks or floors outside concrete things like that supports a video now and give that a go.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Let's go to materials and to know groups over in my Start-Up file.
Saan going to append this PBR plastic into my file since it's already on the screen ready to go.
And I'm also going to go ahead and spend that other material.
PBR last if I could a pen a floor as well.
And let's move this test object.
Well that's not a test object.
Let's get rid of that.
I am going to move in my chequered material actually as well.
So let's go ahead and pen the chequered floor.
I'm just going to construct a basic scene so I've got a plane I'm going to scale that up.
I'm going to go to my materials and there should already be a check a floor there.
Now of course if I apply these to objects now I don't need to give them a fake user but whilst I'm here
I am going to give them a fake user as well so that if any points I decide to remove it from these objects
while I'm practicing I'm not going to remove them from this blender.
Some going to go ahead here with this plane and move it to l.a. and I'm going to move it to the rear.
The last layer.
And I'm going to go to that layer.
Okay.
Now from this last layer.
And when I add in a couple of mesh objects I'm going to add in Suzanne the monkey and hunger.
G.
Z one.
And I'm going to move my 3-d cursor.
To Z equals one as well so these next few that I add so are seen.
Move Suzanne along from there yet the next ones I add to the scene here I'll be able to see straightaway.
I'm going to have mice ecosphere as faceted one because it just looks cool as a crystal.
And what shall I had finally.
Let's had a Taurus have not added to Taurus for a while and glamour tourist nice and smooth as well.
So I've got my various objects here Suzanne I am going to subdivide a couple of times subdivisions surface
modifier.
And add smooth shading.
I'm going to do a very similar thing to my sphere but not so many.
All I did was solidify I want subsurface division.
Apply and smooth that out.
That's agony.
Leave like that.
Now I am also going to make this one nice and smooth as well.
And make it a smooth shade so I've got my few objects here and I'm just going to move my camera to reflect
that obviously this is gonna change the default camera position but I don't care.
In this case now going to add this flaum will go into rended mode.
This floor is currently got PBR plastic.
I'm going to change it to.
Check the floor.
Excellent.
Seems a little dark in here for some reason and I'm not quite sure why ever turned off a lamp or anything.
No I won't.
It does seem up to.
Yes the lamps on like one.
Fair enough.
I can see what's going on there.
Okay so my ball here has got a PBR plastic on it cause I'm already in the start-up up file here.
I can create my materials afresh in this file or together some long ago new here.
I only call this crystal c r y s t l o vissel K.
It does not help when you cant really see the keyboard underneath.
So we got Crystal here and Anna say that to a glass shader.
Okay so we've got V.
The crystal surface here am now going to go into the node editor itself and see if we can refine this
a little further and I'll be back in a few moments once I've tweaked about for a few minutes.
Okay so a little bit of a lie there.
I spent quite a bit of time rather than have fume.
It's just playing with my set up here so I've moved everything over to lay low or the very final layer
here and as we can see by look at the examples here I've turned off everything but the lamp in this
last layer which is a an exact duplicate of the first lamp on layer one has turned everything on.
As we've said we've got a we've got a series of items here and a series of materials as well a pick
from I remember to give them all a fake use to survive.
You decide to delete any of these or don't.
The actual model themselves I don't delete the actual material.
Let's just have a quick look at how all those look.
Take a few moments to render out.
Okay so that's finished rendering out there and we've basically got a chequered floor.
A plastic ring a terracotta teapot a fire ball or just something.
I was playing around with and came up with something quite fanciful there.
A wooden monkey and this faceted sort of gem crystal type thing.
I've been working on there so we can take a look at a couple of these you don't have time for a deep
dive into any of them.
Which ones should we have a look at.
Let's have a look at this tea pot here so I'm going to hide everything else.
Starting to render out here we can see that this terracotta teapot has a texture to the surface.
So let's go have a look at the notes set up and see how that one was set up.
Okay so we'll start at the far side.
The right hand side because this is pretty familiar to us.
We've got our two notes that are quite standard diffusing glossy chaser's mix and for for a knells shader
into a mix shader and to the material outputs.
Now the difference comes this side and it's literally just a texture.
So let's have a look at how it's structured.
First of all we've got a texture coordinates now the texture claudina Simply tells blender how to map
the actual texture to the surface of our object subset its object so it generates the coordinates for
us without having to worry too much about any seams or anything along those lines and because we're
just using a noise texture and nothing else.
That's absolutely fine.
In fact this noise texture here.
If we isolate it we can see what's going on.
So um troll shift and click VAT's and then click it again take a few seconds Blender's running a little
bit slowly for me.
Or not responding.
There we go.
I don't know why that was being a bit slow there.
I think I'm just having a bit of a slowness issue on the computer anyway so we can see that we've got
a black and white output from this noise texture and it kind of looks like some clouds I suppose.
Now this is being put into the bump anode and when that happens is being plugged into the height of
the bump.
My notes so we've got high points and low points and that is being spat out as a normal.
So we go to the bump the head itself ends preview that.
There we go.
We can see.
We get a textured output from it.
Now when we have a look at these individually you can see that the glossy has a little bit of an effect
on it.
The diffuse has a lot.
But even more is the for a nail itself.
It's affected massively by the actual normal mapping is self and that gives us the nice sets of textured
results over the top of the surface.
Of course we can play we can make it look even more mottled by simply increasing the strength to maybe
point five really starts to bring out those particular bumps in the surface of the terracotta.
Excellent.
How did you guys get on what materials did you end up creating.
I've obviously gone for Terry Cotterell and some other wacky ones here and obviously I can branch out
and create more as we go on.
Remember to share your materials that you've made in the discussions in fact link a blend file there
as well so we can she share our materials.
As you start making them and I will see you in the next lecture.