Blend Materials using Other Node Materials

[GMTJay]

I need to make a series of blend materials based on a single base material, all in nodes. How do I go about referencing the base (node) material in the node editor? All I'm able to figure out is to just copy and paste the nodes from the base material into a new material, but that seems to really defeat the purpose.

Thanks,

Jay

[sirio76]

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, maybe something like this will help, you can link a single base to multiple blends:

[GMTJay]

How do those different blends then get applied to different objects?

[sirio76]

How do those different blends then get applied to different objects?

Just like any other material, you drag and drop it on the geometry

[GMTJay]

Hi Sirio, I appreciate you helping me out with this. I'm feeling a bit dense at the moment. I have my base material, and 3 different blends based on it that I want to apply to 3 different objects, but I'm stumped on how to do that. It looks like you don't really have a material unless you pipe it through a Material node last, but it looks like you can only have one material node per material.

[sirio76]

Now I see the issue, it looks like a limitation according to the manual: https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VC4D/Node+Materials
shaio aleksandar.kasabov perhaps it can be improved with future release

What you can do right now is to copy the node (inside the material manager, not the node editor) and only change the needed component.

[GMTJay]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking/afraid of. Doing some research I came across somebody talking about a Reference node in Red Shift that allows you to bring in a whole other material into the node space of a different material. I haven't checked it out to confirm if that really works, but something like that would work here. Ideally C4D's material node space would be such that all the materials exist in there together (I think Max is like that) and materials (in the materials manager) would represent a material output node (in the node manager). I can see how that would be really powerful. But, that's no doubt something Maxon would have to implement and out of Chaos's hands. But it seems like a Reference node should be possible (fingers crossed).

Or, maybe a switch material would do it (seems less elegant)?

[GMTJay]

Here's the set up in Red Shift using reference nodes to blend between two "external" materials. Maybe something like this is possible:

[aleksandar.kasabov]

Hello,

You can only have one output node per node material. We are planning to implement a way to reference materials but we are still looking for the best way to do that. Thanks for your feedback.

[GMTJay]

Thanks, that's good to hear. Something like that will be extremely useful.

[GMTJay]

Hello,

You can only have one output node per node material. We are planning to implement a way to reference materials but we are still looking for the best way to do that. Thanks for your feedback.

Hi Aleksandar, I was just wondering with the Update 2 announcement if there's been any more consideration of this?

[aleksandar.kasabov]

Hello GMTJay,

This has not yet been implemented in V-Ray for Cinema4D. I will let you know if we have additional information to share with you. Thank you for your patience!