Description
What is the Material Nodes addon?
Note: The Material Nodes Addon is also available on:
The Material Nodes is an addon that provides node groups you can easily plug in to your node tree. No need to append node groups, you only need to install the addon. Therefore you can easily speed up building a material that is an improved version of the default material in Blender. Or you can improve an already existing shader.
There are 47 useful node groups included. In the future there will be more nodes provided. Price of the addon will change but if you already have Material Nodes by then, the updates will be for free.
Note: All node-groups are compatible with EEVEE as well as with Cycles. For Blender 2.81, see notes below.
A few of the nodegroups (screenshot from older version):
In Material Nodes Addon version 2.0 we have now big thumbnails:
What is in it for me?
- Material Nodes are always within reach because they are provided through an addon. No need to append, or load a scene. Just use the addon and click on the node group you need.
- The provided node groups are easy to plug in your node tree.
- The Material Node groups speeds up building up a material.
- You can improve existing shaders. Use the LevelCorrector and / or the VarShad node group.
- Make default materials way more natural. The default material in Blender is too perfect and too sterile. In real life materials have loads of variations.
- In case you have a favorite node-group you want me to include, let me know. I will then review it and decide if I can add it.
- Correct Textures you downloaded from the internet. Often they are way too bright or too saturated. Brightness/Contrast is not a very good way to correct textures. Take a look at the LevelCorrector instead.
For who is the Material Nodes addon?
– For those who want to get rid quickly of the sterile look of standard materials.
– And those who are downloading textures and want to correct the albedo values or bring some more variety to the textures.
Known issues.
The Filter Paper and Leather Fake node group show up with a frame messed up. To solve this for now, select the nodes and drag them in the frame. Will be fixed in future update.
Documentation of the Material Nodes Addon.
How to install the Material Nodes Addon?
Download the .zip file called Material_Nodes_V1-3.zip. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences > Addons. Click on Install and navigate to the .zip file you just downloaded. Click install, activate the addon, save preferences and refresh. You can find the addon in the shader editor (n-panel).
Explanation of the nodes provided.
Note: More nodes added, see screenshot. Documentation in Progress.
Albedo variation :
Simple nodegroup to some noise. Bump, roughness and albedo can be affected.It’s just a bit more pleasing to look at when modelling than the sterile basic shaders.
AO-Mix:
Is a mask, so you need this in combination with other nodegroups. I added more parameters so you can adjust AO values. Tip: plug it in Colors from Movies.
Bricks Colors:
Contains several color-ramps with colors from bricks. There is a lot you can do with such color presets like these. Tip: plug in an Index Random and duplicate (Shift+x) your object.
Car Paint:
This is a shader. It has some metal flakes, but still looks more like regular car paint. If you look for a more metallic look, try the Metal Flaked nodegroup. Or you can go in the nodegroup and adjust the colorramp that goes into the Metalic socket.
Checkers Plus.
Quite fun to work with. It is using two checker textures and a un-distorted voronoi (which are also squares). You can combine this to get al kinds of patterns.
Color Ramp Alternative
Color Ramps are great, but we cannot plug it’s settings into a node-group socket. That’s why I designed this node group. By surprise it seems even easier to use than a colorramp.
Colors Environment:
Colors From Movies:
Colors Skin:
Same as the Bricks Colors, but then with colors from the environment like soil, Fire, Sky, Clouds, etc. Plug them into a Level Correction because you will want to adjust the levels of the colors.
Dielectric Albedo Values:
Metal Albedo Values:
This is to ensure that we use plausible albedo values. It’s just for reference to see if our colors (albedo values) are not way to bright or way to dark.
Distort UV:
To distort the UV if we want some imperfections in the straight looking tiles, lines or patterns. It looks likes it distorts the texture but in fact, in the background, it distorts the UV.
Fabric:
Fabric shader. Highly adjustable.
Filter Paper:
Like the brown coffee filter paper.
Glass:
Lot’s of options to make glass look the way you want. Like roughness variation, slight bumpy, adjust colors and reflections on facing and grazing angle. Mind that in EEVEE, you need to bake first (after every change, even after changing other materials, objects and lights). Also in the properties panel, screen space reflections turn on Refraction. And in the material settings (properties panel), set Blend Mode on Alpha Blend.
Golden Noise Mat.
By default as the name says, but this node-group is very adjustable. Main thing is that is has two noise textures inside (substracted) to get another variety of noise. You can adjust the colors. Tip: plug this into a ToBPR_Channels node-group.
Index Random.
Very handy to give each object a variety of the shader. So, instead of making several similar materials for each object, you can use 1 material for all objects. Has Object Index, Material Index, and locations x, y and z.
Layer Weight Plus:
To give a material another look on grazing angle qua hue, saturation or value. Used sometimes for metals. Artistic look.
Leather Fake:
Sky leather shader. Not in a node-group, but nodes. In future update it will be a node-group.
LED:
LED shader. Highly adjustable.
Level Correction:
One of my favorite node-groups. I designed this nodegroup because I was not happy with the brightness and contrast node. This is a safer way to adjust levels.
Magic Voronoi Mix:
Nodegroup gives some noise but with structure.
Could be a base for textile, paper, etc.
Mask Noise:
To mask or mix two colors or shaders. You can clamp the levels.
Mask Noise Lines:
A mask that produces those lines like you see in marble. Use it to mix colors or shaders.
Mask Musgrave Lines:
Same as previous but different look (manmade, alien, mathematical?)
Metal Albedo Values:
This is to ensure that we use plausible albedo values. It’s just for reference to see if our colors (albedo values) are not way to bright or way to dark.
Metal Flaked.
With this node-group you can make metallic looking paint. Tip: you can type higher values in FlakeScale, like: 4000. Very pleasant to use.
Mix Normal Maps.
Mix to normal Texture. For that you need to open the node-group and get other normal maps if need. (There are already two). Then by surprise, these normal maps can generate a color out of the two normal maps. Inside the node-group, you can scale each normal map. That way tiling is less obvious. And if you, on top of that, use the VarShad nodegroup and also UV distortion, most likely no-one will see any tiling effect.
Musgrave Wave Diff
Has the two procedural textures Musgrave and Wave. Most likely to be usefull when making material for stones or marble. Has outputs: Color, Roughness and Normal which are all adjustable. (Vector output is just a throughput to reduce clutter of noodles.
Musgrave Wave Mix.
Same as previous. Now mixing instead of difference of textures.
Noise Plus.
By default, handy to make lava-like materials, but can use it for loads of other things.
OBJ_ID.
Quite powerfull. You can use this to to give each object a variation of the material. You can also make animated leds with this. Documentation or tutorial will follow later.
Plastic foil.
Transparant plastic. Highly adjustable. In the properties panel, under material settings, set the Blend Mode on Alpha Blend. It’s like glass without refractions.
Platinum NMS v2
A lovely, ready to use shader. Very nice to use while modeling in Blender.
ReRoute,
Nothing special, it is just for re-routing. It’s a bit cleaner than the build in reroute in some cases.
Stucco Mat
Procedural Stucco material. You need to go inside the node, and turn on randomness. Will fix in future update. Simple shader, good for quick solution. Not suitable for close-up.
Texture Mapping.
Simple, but very handy and much cleaner than the build in solution in Blender.
TileMaker1.
Fun to play with creating patterns.
Tiles 01:
Tiles 02:
To make tiles with help of normal map and mask/diffuse map.
Loads of parameters to make material look more natural.
To PBR Channels.
With this you can have one texture (diffuse) instead of a specular, roughness, metalic map, etc. Plug in a texture and inside the nodegroup you adjust the colorramps. Looks way cleaner than having loads of colorramps in view.
Var V Noise, Var V Voronoi1, Variation, VarShad”
Give variety to the basic sterile looking basic shaders. VarShad is the most advanced one which never let me down. Quite CPU intensive though.
Vertex Col
Paint something in Vertex Paint on the material, (Or use the addon tissue with curvature in Weight paint and convert it to Vertex Colors). Be sure the Vertex Colors (Col by default) has the same name as Col in the node group. You can mix colors and shaders with the vertex Colors.
Voronoi Wave Diff
Another node group with two procedural textures. Good for organic materials. Tip: don’t use it standalone, but in combination with other building blocks.
Z:
Variety in Z axis.
One Example, The VarShad node-group.
Below, on the left you see a default shader. On the right the same shader but with the VarShad node-group plugged in.
Update per 12 October 2019:
- Option to add the shaders by using Shift+A
- AO Mix : added distance
- Albedo Variation: Vector throughput (output socket connected to the Vector input)
- Checkers Plus: Vector throughput.
- Index Random: Added: Location X, Y and Z sockets, XYZ range and XYZ Offset.
- Level Correction: Fixed default values. Added Hue and Saturation.
- Magic-Voronoi-Mix: Fix naming, Vector throughput
- Musgrave-Wave-Diff: Vector Throughput
- Musgrave-Wave-Mix: Vector Throughput
- Noise Plus: Vector Throughput
- Variation: Vector Throughput
- VarShad: Vector Throughput
- Voronoi-Wave-Diff: Vector Throughput
In case you wonder what is the Vector throughput for; it is to have a cleaner layout. Instead of connecting vector input sockets to the same Mapping node, you can now connect the Vectors throught. Here an example:
Update per 23 Februari 2020:
- Added more node-groups. There are 47 now in version 2.0.
- Big thumbnails. Open the node-editor and press N to open the N-Panel. You will find the material nodes addon there. You can also press Shift+A.
To Do:
- Fix Filter Paper and Fake Leather. The frames are messed up and to solve it for now: drag the nodes into the frame. Will fix this in later update.
- Make more video’s with tips on how to use the nodegroups.
#### How to contact me
- How to contact me in case you need support or have a request?
- You can contact me using the contact form on Blender-addons.org
- You can also send me a pm on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Newmediasupply.
- Or if you are active on Blenderartists.org: https://blenderartists.org/u/Peetie
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