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idea #311: Reuse texture node output in a material (e.g. normal map)



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Written by hoehrer the 10 May 08 at 08:27. Category: Tools. Status: New
Description
Right now it's really hard to reuse the output of material nodes in some cases. Best example is a bump/normal-map, but here are surely more cases.

Consider the following scenario:
* You have a nice image-mask for some part your model (for use in the material node setup)
* You now transform this mask into a different one using a material-node setup.
* You now want to use the new mask for (e.g.) bumpmap - without baking the resulting mask this seems to be pretty impossible.

There where several suggestions already how to solve this, but the only ones I remember are
1) to add a "Texture Output" node to the material node editor which can be used in the material as a texture again. Not perfect but it shows how it _could_ work.
2) There was also a talk about a new "texture nodes" mode or something along this line - that may solve this as well.
Suggestions are welcome.

This is kinda hard to describe, so if you have any question please leave a comment.
I'll try to come up with a quick example image to show the problem better I find some time.

EDIT:
I've found an old thread of mine which shows an example of the problem (first node-setup image in the thread)
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=78265

Werner


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AdminAdmin vilda (Blenderstorm admin) wrote on the 28 Apr 08 at 20:14
Theres material and Advanced material node. The advanced one already enables bump input. But still not all the sockets are available(e.g. displacement :( )

There's really a patch for node textures, I think it's awesome and would be nice to have it in svn.

hoehrer wrote on the 28 Apr 08 at 22:20
Ohhhh, I've seen the advanced node in the menu but didn't yet use it.
Thanks for the tip, will check this out.

Nevertheless, you are right - full support for _any_ type of texture-mapping would be the optimum of course :)
What patch exactly do you mean is there a patch/bug tracker or forum thread somewhere? Couldn't find anything (yet).

Werner

hoehrer wrote on the 28 Apr 08 at 23:34
My bad, i guess you meant this one:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/TextureNodes

If i understand this correctly this is a new node-editor type that'll let you create textures (in contrast to the current material node-trees) ...
As long as the "Output" is meant to be used as a texture in the material-tree i think this is an excellent patch .. otherwise i don't really know what to think :)

Werner

hoehrer wrote on the 30 Apr 08 at 12:58
I just checked out the "Extended Material" node and it also does not provide an input for a simple bump-map.

It uses the default "Normal" value(-map?) as before (recognizable by the blue dots). Same for similar stuff like displacement/etc...

Cheers,
Werner


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