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The Material Merge node
Material Merge Node Introduction
The Material Merge node can be used to combine two separate materials together. This node can be used to composite Material nodes, combining multiple illumination materials (Blinn, Cook Torrance) with texture nodes (Bump Map, Reflection) to create complex shader networks.
The node also provides a mechanism for assigning a new material identifier to the combined material.
Inputs
The Material Merge node includes two inputs for the two materials you want to combine.
— Background Material: The orange Background material input accepts a 2D image or a 3D material to be used as the background material.
— Foreground Material: The green Foreground material input accepts a 2D image or a 3D material to be used as the foreground material. A 2D image is treated as a diffuse texture map in the basic shading model.
Basic Node Setup
The output of a Material Merge node is connected to the material input on a 3D scene or 3D geometry node. The Material Merge node below is taking in a background base layer from the Blinn shader and combining it with a more textured bump map layer.
A Material Merge node combining a Blinn-based shader (teal underlay) and a Ward-based shader (orange underlay)