Grouping nodes under frames for easier reading
by Enrico Valenza, Pierre-Armand Nicq, Romain Caudron
Blender 3D: Designing Objects
- Blender 3D: Designing Objects
- Table of Contents
- Blender 3D: Designing Objects
- Blender 3D: Designing Objects
- Credits
- Preface
- 1. Module 1
- 1. Straight into Blender!
- 2. Robot Toy – Modeling of an Object
- Let's start the modeling of our robot toy
- Using the basic modeling tools
- Modeling the head
- Modeling the antenna
- An introduction to the Subdivision Surface modifier
- Modeling the thunderbolts
- Modeling the eyes
- Modeling the chest
- Modeling the neck
- Modeling the torso
- Modeling the buttons
- Modeling the fork
- Modeling the main wheel
- Modeling the arm
- Using Blender Internal to render our Robot Toy
- Summary
- 3. Alien Character – Base Mesh Creation and Sculpting
- 4. Alien Character – Creating a Proper Topology and Transferring the Sculpt Details
- 5. Haunted House – Modeling of the Scene
- 6. Haunted House – Putting Colors on It
- 7. Haunted House – Adding Materials and Lights in Cycles
- 8. Rat Cowboy – Learning To Rig a Character for Animation
- 9. Rat Cowboy – Animate a Full Sequence
- 10. Rat Cowboy – Rendering, Compositing, and Editing
- 2. Module 2
- 1. Modeling the Character's Base Mesh
- 2. Sculpting the Character's Base Mesh
- 3. Polygonal Modeling of the Character's Accessories
- 4. Re-topology of the High Resolution Sculpted Character's Mesh
- 5. Unwrapping the Low Resolution Mesh
- 6. Rigging the Low Resolution Mesh
- Introduction
- Building the character's Armature from scratch
- Perfecting the Armature to also function as a rig for the Armor
- Building the character's Armature through the Human Meta-Rig
- Building the animation controls and the Inverse Kinematic
- Generating the character's Armature by using the Rigify add-on
- 7. Skinning the Low Resolution Mesh
- 8. Finalizing the Model
- 9. Animating the Character
- 10. Creating the Textures
- Introduction
- Making a tileable scales image in Blender Internal
- Preparing the model to use the UDIM UV tiles
- Baking the tileable scales texture into the UV tiles
- Painting to fix the seams and to modify the baked scales image maps
- Painting the color maps in Blender Internal
- Painting the color maps in Cycles
- 11. Refining the Textures
- 12. Creating the Materials in Cycles
- 13. Creating the Materials in Blender Internal
- 14. Lighting, Rendering, and a Little Bit of Compositing
- 3. Module 3
- 1. Overview of Materials in Cycles
- 2. Managing Cycles Materials
- 3. Creating Natural Materials in Cycles
- Introduction
- Creating a rock material using image maps
- Creating a rock material using procedural textures
- Creating a sand material using procedural textures
- Creating a simple ground material using procedural textures
- Creating a snow material using procedural textures
- Creating an ice material using procedural textures
- 4. Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles
- Introduction
- Creating a generic plastic material
- Creating a Bakelite material
- Creating an expanded polystyrene material
- Creating a clear (glassy) polystyrene material
- Creating a rubber material
- Creating an antique bronze material with procedurals
- Creating a multipurpose metal node group
- Creating a rusty metal material with procedurals
- Creating a wood material with procedurals
- 5. Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles
- 6. Creating More Complex Man-made Materials
- 7. Subsurface Scattering in Cycles
- Introduction
- Using the Subsurface Scattering shader node
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Translucent shader
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Vertex Color tool
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Ray Length output in the Light Path node
- Creating a fake Subsurface Scattering node group
- 8. Creating Organic Materials
- Introduction
- Creating an organic-looking shader with procedurals
- Creating a wasp-like chitin material with procedural textures
- Creating a beetle-like chitin material with procedural textures
- Creating tree shaders – the bark
- Creating tree shaders – the leaves
- Creating a layered human skin material in Cycles
- Creating fur and hair
- Creating a gray alien skin material with procedurals
- 9. Special Materials
- Bibliography
- Index
The shaders we have seen so far are quite simple and easily readable in the Node Editor window, but for several materials we'll see in this Cookbook, the node connections will be a lot more complex and confusing. One more aid we can use to improve the readability of these nodes are the frames. We can use them to visually organize the shaders' network.
Let's see the use of a frame with a simple shader that we already know:
- Go to the Node Editor window and press Shift + A to add a Frame (press Shift + A and navigate to Layout | Frame). Move the mouse to place its arrow over the nodes, and notice that it always appears to be below them, as shown in the following screenshot:
Adding a Frame to the network inside the Node Editor window
- Move the mouse cursor to a corner of the frame. It turns into a cross, which means that you can click and drag to resize the corners and the sides of the frame to include the desired nodes as shown in the following screenshot:
Resizing the Frame to comprise all the nodes
- Box-select the nodes you want to arrange with the frame (in our case, all of them), then press Shift, and select the frame (or just press A to deselect the frame and box-select everything so that the frame is selected again as the active object). Press Ctrl + P to parent them.
Now that the nodes are parented to the frame, we can select and move it, and all the contained nodes will follow it as a single object.
It's still possible to select the single nodes inside the frames and arrange their individual position and connections. To add a new node to the network, we will do as usual (press Shift + A | …) and then parent it to the frame as well.
- With the frame still selected, go to the Properties panel to the right of the Node Editor window (Press N if not already present). Just like the case of single nodes, in the Node subpanel, we can change the Name of the frame, assign a Label name visible in the Node Editor window (I wrote
BasicShader), and also assign a color. - In the Properties subpanel right below the Color subpanel, we can change the size of the label name, which is set to
20by default, and by unchecking the Shrink item, we can freely resize the frame bigger, which otherwise encloses the nodes with a fixed boundary (the default setting), which is shown in the following screenshot for your reference:
The Frame with label and color
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