Understanding Texture Coordinates - Getting Started with Blender Nodes

Texture coordinates can look like magic but once you understand them, they're really straight forward. Coordinate manipulation is the most fundamental part of procedural texturing so it's worth getting your head around what the colours mean and what options we have available!

Contents:
00:00 - Intro
00:11 - Where and what are texture coordinates?
03:57 - UV Map node
04:34 - Generated
05:47 - Normal
06:24 - UV
06:40 - Object
07:20 - Camera
08:12 - Window
08:33 - Reflection
09:20 - Position
10:03 - Normal, Tangent & True Normal
10:53 - Incoming
11:25 - Parametric
11:53 - Backface, Pointiness & Random per Island
12:26 - Summary
13:46 - Outro

Please let me know how I can improve these videos!

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Nodes Used:
INPUT
-Geometry
-Texture Coordinate
-UV Map

Shortcuts:
SHIFT+A: Add menu
SHIFT+D: Duplicate node
CTRL+SHIFT+D: Duplicate with connected inputs
CTRL+H: Hide unused node sockets
H: Minimise selected node
M: Mute selected node
CTRL+J: Frame selected nodes
CTRL+G: Group selected nodes
SHIFT+TAB: Turn on snapping
CTRL+SPACE: Maximise work area
G: Grab (especially useful when trying to move reroutes)
CTRL+X: Dissolve node
CTRL+Right Click: Cut noodle
SHIFT+Right Click: Add reroute
D+Left Click: Draw annotation
D+Right Click: Erase annotation
CTRL+Drag a slider to snap
SHIFT+Drag a slider for fine adjustments
F2: Rename a node

[gottagowork]

Geometry normal and Texture normal is not the same. One reflects world normal and the other reflects object normal.
Reflection coords can be used with environment mapping to create lookup "fake" reflections.
Object coords can be used with an external object as basis but is unaffected by modifiers.
Generated coords can be controlled with texture scale property and will be affected by some modifiers.
Could have used vector/modulo and vector/fraction to describe how they both react to negative coords, sometimes important.
Incoming normal is great for refraction, allows blurred refraction on thin walled surfaces without bending light infinitely.
Very true, some are not useful for texture coordinate but for masking purposes.
Note that UVs doesn't have to be strictly for texture coordinates, it's just two data channels you can use for whatever you need.

[maximumcustoms]

I think you might be the only person on youtube to finally explain this in detail (as far as I know), so thank you.

[retromograph]

Why are you the first person who actually managed to clearly and simply explain this on Youtube? i've been scratching my head for months about how this all works, now i geddit many thanks!

[JustDThings]

One of the most comprehensive Tutorial. Amazing work Erin

[maxkipchumba]

Straight to the point and very comprehensive. May God bless you mahn

[ladybird]

i've looking for this for couple of days, really helpful!

[MumTheWeiser]

this is far and away my favorite tutorial series. everything is explained really well and easy to follow. and it makes me want to play around in blender even more. thanks for making these

[adamzackheim]

Great in depth yet simple explanation! Helped me distribute my texture over multiple object and still keep the same size.

[PauloSamurai]

Camera coordinates are crazy!!! Great tutorial! thanks a lot!

[iamthechildofgod]

one of the best tutorials THANKS and appreciate it, God bless you

[chamarasilva]

Hi, great explanation. This is the only tutorial I found that explains the coordinate system fully. Can you make a follow-up tutorial giving an example use case for each of these coordinate systems? Thanks again.

[harald_schubert]

Oh my god now I understand it thank you so much. If it weren’t for blendernest I wouldn’t of found your channel. Thank you

[vstreet]

THANK YOU Erindale! I have watched a lot of Blender tutorials during the last 18 months. This is by far the best I have seen. 
A very concise, clear, understandable, explanation of texture coordinates.
Until now, I have never really fully understood all of the options. Now I do. Looking forward to watching more from you. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. THANK YOU! Dg

[ΑλέξηςΜιχαήλ-ιπ]

an excellent tutorial, thanks for making it so technical and easy to understand

[andreyserov]

thank you for this ultimate explanation. Expecially for the idea of using "volume" to visualize the coordinates:)

[XuhanQian]

such a nice-explained tutorial ! Really appreciate your work

[kingdomsaa]

my man, I swear i was thinking about the differences between 3 nodes yesterday
thank you erin

[sleeve-tv]

I love this video, such a great explanation! THANK YOU

[mohkh]

Great detailed explanation, the coding level of Blender . I hope to see such explanation with other complicated subjects like Rigging .

[DangitDigital]

This is fantastically helpful. Thank you!