Nodes in Blender

Nodes are like pieces of materials. They’re simple, modular building blocks that each perform a specific function. You connect their sockets to build more complicated materials. There are two default nodes in the Shader Editor: Principled Shader and Material Output. For simple projects, like the ones in this book, you won’t need any more nodes than these.

Let’s start with the Principled BSDF node.

The Principled BSDF node

The Principled BSDF node is the most useful shader node. BSDF stands for the Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function, and it’s a program that calculates how light bounces off a surface.

It’s not too hard to see why BSDF exists. Shader nodes are the only kind of node you can connect to the Surface output.

The Principled BSDF node has a lot of inputs, as shown in Figure 6.4:

Figure 6.4: The Principled BSDF node

However, most of the time, you’ll only be focusing...