I can create a material using an image, the toolbox property approach creates an Image node, a diffuse and the output.
However I’ve seen a few youtubes where people directly connect the image node to the output, when I try this I don’t get the rendered image.
I’m also stumped with mixing image nodes, if I create two image nodes, both going through a diffuse node, then to a mix node, then to the output, the render is just white, no adjustment of the mixer makes any difference. I can directly connect an image to the output (though a diffuse) and both work fine. What gives?
Those videos are probably about the BlenderInternal, where the output can be just a color. In Cycles, you need a Closure so you can only plug Shaders into the output.
And always mind the color coding of the inputs and outputs: Green must ALWAYS and ONLY be connected to green.
So, if you want to mix images, do it on the “yellow level” before plugging them into the shader or mix the shaders afterwards with a Mix Shader node (instead of a Color Mix node).
Ah, maybe that’s where I was going wrong. I’m still finding nodes a bit confusing, I’ve not worked with this kind of logic before. Well, not in a gui form.