Basic Shaders

As we mentioned before, Cycles materials are made of shaders. How can you add shaders to a material? When you add a new material, in the Surface panel you’ll see a Diffuse BSDF shader option. By clicking the shader’s name, you can pick a different shader option. Let’s look at some of the most commonly used shaders.

Diffuse BSDF: It’s the basic shader—just a colored surface.

Transparent BSDF: This shader makes the surface transparent.

Glossy BSDF: A shader that is shiny and reflective, by controlling its roughness you’ll get shine and reflections that are more blurred.

Hair BSDF: This shader is specially designed for use with hair particles.

Refraction: This shader adds refraction effects to the surface of an object.

Glass: This shader will add effects such as transparency, refraction, reflection, and glossiness.

Anisotropic BSDF: This shader is very useful for simulating metallic objects. What makes it different from the Glossy shader is that it adds an anisotropic shine to an object’s surface.

Emission: Probably one of the coolest shaders, it allows you to convert any mesh into light! This shader emits light and you can control the intensity and color (something not possible in Blender Render).

There are more shaders, but these are the ones that you’ll probably use most often. Try some of the others, though; you may find them useful. Each one of them will show a couple of options that you can adjust to control its properties (color, roughness, intensity, etc.).