All 80+ Blender material nodes explained in under 30 minutes

In this tutorial, I'll be explaining every single Blender material node there is, while keeping it beginner friendly. In Blender 2.8, material nodes have been expanded to include a few more. Astoundingly, no one has done this yet, so I thought I would take one for the team. After all, someone had to do it.

Procedural materials: (not by me)

Timestamps:
Input Nodes: 1:20
Shader Nodes: 7:15
Texture Nodes: 14:45
Color Nodes: 18:01
Vector Nodes: 20:34
Converter Nodes: 22:54
Misc Nodes: 27:25

GIMP Blend mode docs:

Using the Blender 2.82 documentation for reference
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Video by Daniel Krafft

[officialstevenma]

Holy mother of corrupted normals, someone actually did it

[FunnyAnimatoFilms]

Table of Contents

Input Nodes
Ambient Occlusion 1:22
Attribute 1:51
Camera Data 2:08
Fresnel 2:24
Geometry 2:35
Hair Info 2:55
Layer Weight 3:07
Light Path 3:20
Object Info 4:27
Particle info 4:49
RGB 5:07
Tangent 5:12 ---- See Anisotropic BSDF 7:31
Texture Coordinate 5:28
UV Map 6:32
Value 6:38
Wireframe 6:43
Material Output 6:48

Shader Nodes
Add Shader 7:20
Anisotropic BSDF 7:31 ---- See Tangient 5:12
Diffuse BSDF 7:47 ---- What is a BSDF? ---- See Principled BSDF 11:00
Emission 8:26
Glass BSDF 8:38
Hair BDSM 9:39 ---- See Principled Hair BSDF 12:53
Holdout 9:55 ---- Invisible Susan
Mix Shader 10:31
Principled BSDF 11:00
Principled Hair BSDF 12:53
Principled Volume 13:48
Refraction BSDF 13:52
Subsurface Scattering 14:04
Toon BSDF 14:15
Translucent BSDF 14:25
Transparent BSDF 14:30
Velvet BSDF 14:35
Volume Absorption & Volume Scatter 14:42

Texture Nodes

Brick Texture 14:48
Checker Texture 15:01
Environment Texture 15:05
Gradient Texture 15:17 ---- See Math 25:42
IES Texture 15:35
Image Texture 15:51
Magic Texture 16:46
Musgrave Texture 16:55
Noise Texture 17:07
Sky Texture 17:19
Voronoi Texture 17:28
Wave Texture 17:40
White Noise Texture 17:52

Color Nodes
Bright/Contrast 18:02
Gamma 18:22
Hue Saturation Value 18:32 ---- Who?
Invert 18:58
Mix RGB 19:02
Light Falloff 19:31 ---- See ColorRamp 23:38
RGB Curves 20:24

Vector Nodes
Bump 20:34
Vector Curves 20:57
Displacement 21:31
Mapping 22:31

Converter Nodes
Black Body 23:00
Clamp 23:10
ColorRamp 23:38
Separate & Combine 24:31
---- Separate RGB & Combine RGB 24:35
---- Separate XYZ & Combine XYZ 24:55
---- Separate HSV & Combine HSV 25:09
Map Range 25:18
Math 25:42
RGB to BW 26:23
Shader to RGB 26:31 ---- See ColorRamp 23:38
Vector Math 26:59 ---- See Math 25:42
Wavelength 27:15

Misc Nodes
Script 27:28
Make Group 27:34
Layout 28:03
---- Frame 28:05
---- Reroute 28:15


Leave a comment if a timestamp is broken or my labeling can be more specific and I'll change it. I'm not busy.

[acewmd.]

Someone had to do it, Timestamps:
1:22 Ambient Occlusion
1:50 Attribute
2:10 Camera Data
2:12 View Vector
2:16 View Z-Depth
2:20 View Distance
2:24 Prenell
2:36 Geometry
2:56 Hair Info
3:07 Layer Weight
3:20 Light Path
4:28 Object Info
5:09 RGB
5:12 Tangent
5:31 Texture Coordinate
6:33 UV Map
6:38 Value
6:43 Wireframe
6:50 Material Output
7:20 Add Shader
7:32 Anisotropic BSDF
7:50 Diffuse BSDF
8:31 Emissive(idk)
8:42 Glass
9:40 Hair
9:57 Holdout
10:31 Mix
11:02 Principled BSDF (Very important)
12:53 Principled Hair BSDF
13:49 Principled Volume
13:53 Refraction BSDF
14:05 Subsurface Scattering
14:16 Tune BSDF
14:25 Translucent
14:32 Transparent BSDF
14:37 Velvet BSDF
14:43 Volume Absorption/Scatter
14:48 Brick Texture
15:01 Checkered Texture
15:07 Environment Texture
15:17 Gradient Texture
15:35 IES Texture
15:53 Image Texture
16:49 Magic Texture
16:55 Musgrave Texture
17:08 Noise Texture
17:20 Sky Texture
17:29 Voronoi Texture
17:41 Wave Texture
17:53 White Noise Texture
18:01 Brightness/Contrast
18:35 Hue Saturation Value
18:59 Invert
19:03 Mix RGB
19:32 Light Falloff
20:26 RGB Curves
20:38 Bump
20:58 Vector Curves
21:32 Displacement
22:32 Mapping
23:02 BlackBody
23:12 Clamp
23:40 Color Ramp
24:32 Separate/Combine
25:20 Map Range
25:49 Math
26:26 RGB To BW
27:00 Vector Math
27:16 Wavelength
28:07 Frame.
After that he used something to connect the nodes at a joint and I’m not sure what that was since the video cuts to after.

[loquiman]

THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE promoted to youtube home page of everyone who uses blender! That would be a good working algorithm

[NOTA_Productions]

He’s not the hero that blender deserves, but he’s the one that it needs

[deamzmusicofficial]

3yrs later and this videos aged so well. Still one of the best shader node guides. Big ups to your brother 🖤

[thebumblecrag]

Was literally thinking "I wonder if somebody has a guide or pdf explaining all the nodes?" Way to do it my guy, thank you.

[pinywood]

OMG YES at last someone did this! I know this takes a lot of effort and was looking for someone to do all the material nodes tutorial but no one actually did it...thank u much

[strawberrycrxme]

I’ve been using blender since 2016, but never bothered to look fully into the nodes. I watched the entire video and now my skill level went up a lot, this helped me a ton

[sun_beams]

7:40 Anisotropic also stretches reflections, like you'd typically see along a metal bar or something. Basically so you don't just have a polished mirror surface, it gives kind of a grain to metal reflections. So the bottom of a pan or the sides of one.

[raikunclips]

Now that I watched this, while I'm not gonna remember exactly what each node does, I will know that there has to be a node or a combination of nodes that can do exactly what I want to achieve in Blender when working on a project, and every time I'm gonna remember that, I'm gonna come back to this video and watch through it hoping to see that one specific part that I need. Plus, now that I know more about each node, it's gonna be way easier to search for solutions on Google, because I'm actually gonna be able to search things like "How to use the fresnel node" instead of "How can I make object glossy and reflective". HUGE thanks for making this video!!!

[pratyaypal]

Finally I can at least try and make my own node combinations rather than copy what other people do. Hats off to you. I regret not having found this sooner.

[simplepanda]

After this video i definitely gained more confidence in exploring shading and all of its possibilities. And I have a video which I can always come back to when I am experimenting .Truly thank you

[bhargavchavda]

Thank you so much man, really helpful for a beginner like me, I'm familiar with all these terms like anisotropy, roughness, normal maps cause I'm a tech and science enthusiast but didn't know how they function on the nodes🙏

[cryochamberlabel]

Regarding the Normal Texture Coordinate for dust, you can Object-Apply Rotation to reset the dust direction after rotating, if anyone is having issues with this.

[anisearts]

I think a alot of the time people don't do node tutorials is because each node can be used for multiple things in different ways or its just too many. However, you just nail it spot on. So keep up the good work, Daniel!

[ColinTimmins]

I travelled two years into the future, and randomly watched this video. It’s really well done. Totally worth the time credits I spent on this trip! =]

[lawrencedoliveiro]

2:27 “Fresnel” is named after the guy who first discovered a common physical property of many materials, whereby they are more reflective the more they face sideways to you, rather than directly towards you. This is true of glass, for example.

[yemo]

"Don't choke on your ambition, director...."

*Vader voice

[golemtabak]

Wow, what a lesson! I had no idea about nodes - now I still don't. But I got an idea of how powerful they are, created some nice textures along the way, and got a taste for the subject. That's a lot more than I expected. Thanks a lot!