Reply To: What is the difference between shader, materials and textures?
Forum Archive › What is the difference between shader, materials and textures? › Reply To: What is the difference between shader, materials and textures?
This has been a great thread to follow – especially having just completed the fundamentals of materials and shaders course a couple of days ago!
To build on a couple things that have been said – If I may. And please correct me if I’m wrong (especially Omar considering that you just marked my submission and if I’m wrong I’ll send myself to the corner of the classroom haha).
Dwayne: “If I remember correctly add shader node is more for volume materials. I could be wrong on that”
Martin: “But sometimes you want more control over separate components (ie. Shader Nodes), or break physics, because it looks better in a specific case, then you can (will have to) use Mix Shaders instead…”
The notes I have written down from Chapter 2 – Video 2 in the aformentioned course are that the Add shader isn’t often used. It’s more used for volumes, emissions etc – (which I assume just makes things more dense, or intense). Adding shaders is likely (or always? going) to add to over 100% which is phyically impossible when it comes to surface BDSFs. Adding two glossy shaders together will tell the render engine to bounce out 200% of the light that it is coming in.
To roughly quote Jonathan in the video – “99% of the time, if we’re making a layered material or something that is physically plausible we’ll want to use a mix shader, that’s going to keep you within the realistic ranges and you won’t break the laws of physics”. Martin is also right in saying that it can look better in specific cases – at that point I guess it just comes down to artistic influence. While the Principled BSDF is fast, it’s been pretty handy knowing how mixing and adding shaders together works under the hood.
@546_student if you are able to, I’d greatly recommend going through the Fundamentals of Materials and Shaders course – it’s wildly informative, and also made me mutter “oh shiiiiiiii..” under my breath a number of times as to how these things work and learning what we are able to do with them!