A higher-level shader that can contain one or more sub-shaders, such as surface shaders, displacement shaders, and property shaders.
Overview
The Material node is a container for other shader types, letting you “package up” combinations of lower-level shaders (such as surface shaders and displacement shaders) with individual settings into a new “look” you can assign as a single unit.
The gallery of materials in the material palette pane are all customized examples of the Material shader.
See the documentation for the gallery materials that ship with Houdini.
Creating and editing materials
Through Houdini’s parameter editing interface, you can promote parameters from contained shaders onto the material, letting you create a material with a custom interface, where users can manipulate some of the underlying parameters but others are kept hidden.
| To... | Do this |
|---|---|
| Create a new Material from scratch | In the network editor,
Go to the |
| Customize an existing material from the gallery | Click the Material Palette pane. Drag one of the materials from the gallery (on the left) into the list of shaders in the scene (on the right). Then you can edit the material’s settings, edit the shaders inside, or edit its interface. See the material palette documentation for more information. |
| Promote parameters from contained shaders onto the Material node | In the material’s parameter editor, click the
See the parameter editing window documentation for more information. |
| Override a material’s settings per-object or per-primitive | See rendering properties. |
Gear icon and choose
Edit parameter interface. Under Create parameters,
click the From nodes tab, then drag parameters from
shaders inside the material into the Existing parameters
list to promote them.