I'm part way through the Fundamentals of Materials and Shading and found a link embedded in one of the videos for the Shader Forge.
It looks blimmin' wild and I'm really curious so I've saved the course to come back to it.
After watching the trailer for it, however, it appears that it was made a good number of years ago (Youtube says 5 years ago) with an earlier version of Blender. Would it be applicable to the current version of Blender? Ie does anyone know if blender has been updated since in such a way where the features in the course no longer exist, or have been renamed and relocated etc?
Cheers!
Hi Harris,
Some Nodes have been slightly changed (I think mainly: the Voronoi: use the Distance output in modern Blender. And Displacement now goes through a Vector > Displacement Node).
I'd still recommend using the version used in the tutorials, which can usually be found on the top of the UI, or at least use something before 2.80:
If you want to use 4.0, you can, but you'll have to be flexible and maybe ask a question if you get stuck.
Always important is, to not blindly use the same numbers as in the Lessons, but play around until you get a result you like.
You can really learn a lot from Shader Forge.
Yeah Harris, don't be afraid to use the Blender version that is used in the course. There is an OCD we all have that we need to be using the latest thing, but our brains are playing a bad trick on our minds. You are not missing out if you use Blender 2.7 to do the course, again, you are not missing out, totally the contrary, you can perfectly use 2.7 and absorb the core knowledge which doesn't change and is present through each Blender version ever.
Blender is 98% the same always, the things that change are a speckle compared to the overall 3D concepts that have always been there. Once you know the core concepts and you go back to 4.0, the little annoyance is that in Blender 4.0 the buttons will just be in some other place and that to relocate stuff in the UI is easy, compared to the headache of having a huge discrepancy between what's on the video and in the Blender you are using.
Blender changes too fast and this will always be the case, so the best solution by far is to always use the Blender version that is used in the tutorial you are watching. Over time this becomes a non issue since you know the concepts and you just figure out where the button is.
A lot of the texture nodes where updated to the newer industry standard in 2.82 so they all work slightly different. In some you will need to change to 2D instead of the default of 3D to get similar results. In 4.0 the principle shader has been changed. mostly different names and collapsible subpanels, but SSS and sheen have been reordered in the processing and mixing order. So be prepared to do some exploring.