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I am trying to achieve a photo-realistic splash of liquid akin to orange juice and have tried my hand at it, and referred to a quick tutorial (node setup photo, actually) for how to setup the nodes for the material. However, I need to be able to switch the liquid's base color somehow, optimally by just retracing the node connections from some color source (currently trying a Diffuse BSDF) to the "color" input connection on the nodes. So the node setup kind of works if I just set the color in the Glossy and Subsurface Scattering nodes directly. But if I then drag the output connection from that Diffuse node to the input for "color" on the two nodes, it refuses to use those colors and instead uses the colors that had been previously selected in the nodes themselves. Is this a bug with blender 2.78a? Or is there some specific way to do this that I am not aware of?

Edit: adding screencaps

Full setup with the nodes connected: (the left-most nodes would supply the color to the next column of nodes) nodes connected

These are the colors set in the nodes, which are the ones that end up in the final rendering, not despite connecting the "color source" (diffuse) nodes. nodes not connected

insaner
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  • @cegaton, sorry, I pressed "enter" when selecting the tags and it submitted the question while I was still typing it out, I have added the missing text now, let me know if there's any further info I need to provide – insaner Jul 08 '17 at 04:00

2 Answers2

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You should use an RGB as input to both color inputs in your nodes, so changing one affects the other.rgb node input to color sockets

Craig D Jones
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  • Is there a way to get the output of the RGB in hex or something? Or use a dropper to input the color? – insaner Jul 08 '17 at 04:17
  • Ok figured out a workaround by mistake too, I can just drag and drop the color from the color selector of the diffuse node to the RGB node – insaner Jul 08 '17 at 04:43
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    Click on the color tab at the bottom of the RGB node, or on the color in the shader node and you will see it has options there for HEX input as well – Craig D Jones Jul 09 '17 at 04:46
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It is not possible to use a Shader output as an input of any node except Mix Shader, Add Shader, and Material Output. This is because shader nodes are computed on Render, so their data is not available. As Craig D Jones's answer indicates, all your color mixing needs to be done with color nodes.

For the most part, the shader nodes just take the input color and then lighten or darken it based on light and other parameters. So the main implication of node being able to use Shader nodes as inputs into each other is that you have no way to get access to Shading within a material node (barring certain hack-ish workarounds that are not photorealistic.)

Note that in Blender Internal, you CAN use the output of material nodes into other nodes, but that is because the render engine functions differently.

Ascalon
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    related link: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33915/what-is-the-meaning-of-the-color-of-the-node-sockets-in-the-node-editor –  Jul 08 '17 at 22:04