Shading

Materials with the Shader Editor

Connect nodes to build any material — from brushed metal to subsurface skin — using Blender's Principled BSDF and procedural textures.

Step-by-step

1
Open the Shader Editor
Switch a workspace tab to Shading, or change any editor's type to 'Shader Editor'. Select an object and click 'New' in the header to create a material.
2
Understand the Principled BSDF
It's a single node that simulates 99% of real-world materials. Key sliders: Base Color (albedo), Metallic (0 for non-metals, 1 for metals), Roughness (0 mirror, 1 chalky), and Normal (surface detail).
3
Add texture maps
Press Shift + A → Texture → Image Texture, load a PNG or JPG, and drag its Color output to Base Color. Set the colorspace to 'Non-Color' for roughness, normal and bump maps. Watch tutorial.
4
Use procedural textures
Noise, Voronoi and Musgrave textures produce infinite detail without UVs. Pipe them through a ColorRamp to control contrast, then into Roughness or Displacement.
NOTE! Procedural textures are not accepted in Dungeon Alchemist. To get these textures to transfer into Dungeon Alchemist you will need to bake your images first!
5
Preview and render
Switch the viewport shading mode to 'Material Preview' (sphere icon) or 'Rendered' for live raytraced feedback. Use Cycles for accuracy, Eevee for speed.

Keys	Action
`Shift + A`	Add node
`Ctrl + Shift + click`	Preview node output in viewport
`M`	Mute selected node
`F`	Connect selected nodes
`Z`	Cycle viewport shading modes

Real-world metals have colored reflections — use orange/copper hues for copper, slight blue for aluminum.
Almost no surface is perfectly smooth. Add a small Noise texture to Roughness for subtle variation.
Group nodes (Ctrl + G) once a network is working — it cleans up the editor and lets you reuse the setup.