Overview
There are two ways to specify 3Delight materials in your recipe: using Katana's Material node, and using Katana's Network Material node. The main difference between both is that you may define a whole shading network based on a Network Material, while a Material node may only specify a sole shader.
Using the Material Node
Create a Material node.
- Press tab and begin to type "material".
- Pick Material to create a Material node.
- Click the faint gray square to the right of the new node's label (or press E) to edit its parameters in the Parameters panel.
Add a 3Delight shader to the material node.
In the Parameters panel, click Add Shader and select the type of shader you want to create under dl. In this example, a surface shader is created.
Select a 3Delight shader.
Click the down arrow to the right of the dlSurfaceShader label to display a list of available surface shaders. Select the desired shader from the list.
The shader parameters are now accessible.
Unfold the parameters by clicking the arrow to the left of the dlSurfaceShader label to reveal the shader parameters.
The Material node can be assigned to scene objects using the MaterialAssign node.
Using the Network Material Node
This procedure illustrates how to create a shading network composed of some 3Delight shaders. The shading network is composed of some DlSahdingNodes, and one NetworkMaterial node. The Network Material can be assigned via a materialAssign node.
The task of creating a shading network is much simplified by using the shading node layered menu - it becomes a simple matter of connecting together node groups.
Create a surface shader.
- In the Nodegraph, press
Sto display the shading node layered menu. Begin to type "material". - Pick material3Delight to create the shading node. A NetworkMaterial node is automatically created and connected to the output of the new material3Delight node.
Create a texture for the surface shader.
- In the Nodegraph, press
Sto display the shading node layered menu. Begin to type "checker". - Pick checker to create the node. Since checker is a 2D Texture node, a place2dTexture node is automatically created and connected to it.
- Click on the faint square to the right of the node name label (or press E) to edit the node's parameters in the Parameters panel.
Configure the place2dTexture shader.
- Set the RepeatU and RepeatV parameters to 8.
Connect the texture shader to the surface shader.
- Click on the arrow to the right of the checker node to select an output port to connect.
- Select outColor from the output port list.
- Click the arrow to the left of the material3delight node to select the input port to connect.
- Select Base Layer → Diffuse → Color.
The NetworkMaterial can be assigned using a MaterialAssign Katana node.