Hey there guys.

So now that SideFX is moving away from shops to material networks how do we actually work with these?

In Shops its very easy to distinguish each material, because you place a material first and then dive into it to create the shaders.

but if I place down a mat network and tab I see right away all the building blocks for making materials.

So I guess what I am saying is how do we now manage materials if all the nodes for all of the shaders will be visible.?

I mean, what is a good practice of how it was meant to be used?

Nevermind

found this masterclass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcqYapujTNk [youtube.com]

Cool stuff. ( These master classes are sooooo useful to get up and running because sometimes things are not self-explanatory. )

Cheers

Yes, the best source of info about new materials is this masterclass and some doc pages
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/shade/_index [sidefx.com]
especially links in the Creating Materials section on that page.


There is also some unofficial, informal, and roughly presented overview of H16 materials recorded during beta period that touches on the question you posed of what is a material and what is a building block.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV96RXPNJ8jfSz9XfABCUsHmh3rUjtfJg [youtube.com]