How to find the "Use Nodes Button" and hotkey prob - Newbie here

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi!

Brand new to Blender here. Loving it but frustrated at times.

I did a search both of the web at large and of these forums and couldn’t find an answer.

I’m following this tutorial right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7fgeQC1WI at 8:20 in the tutorial, he wants you to click on the “Use Nodes” button. Except I don’t seem to have one. No such button anywhere in the interface I can find.

I’m using version 2.71 on Win 7. In case it matters. Has this button been phased out/moved? (The tutorial is using ver 2.6 something.) Where should I go to find the same button? Or what should I do instead?

The manual is way challenging. It’s semi okay at telling you WHAT things do, (providing you can figure out what those things even MEAN) but (at least for a newbie like me) doesn’t seem to say what buttons to press TO DO those things. Am I possibly missing some big/important part of the manual that I haven’t located yet?

I’m not entirely a graphics newbie, though I’m hardly an expert. Most of my experience has been with Photoshop and Adobe/Macromedia (yeah, way back then) Flash. I had Maya for a year or so, a few years back, but lost my program to a house fire.

So now I’m learning this stuff all over again.

Another wacky question: The most efficient way of using Blender seems to be via hotkeys. And – ARGH! --that’s what most of the tutorials I’ve found use. My computer recognizes hotkeys JUST FINE in most programs but in Blender, for some reason, it refuses to.

For instance, if I want to scale, I can slam down the S key six ways to Sunday, input my variables and NOTHING HAPPENS. Zero, nada, zip. If I want it to work, I have to select “Scale” from the side menu and go from there. (Then the rest of the hotkeys work,) Except when it intermittently works.

Another example, I was told the ESC key would get me out of Render mode. No luck there. Crashed my project while trying different fixes. Never figured out how to leave Render mode.

I’ve got 4 theories on this:

  1. Win 7 doesn’t have enough computing power. Or just doesn’t work well with Blender in the first place.
  2. My lousy computer is messing with me. (My GOOD computer just crashed the motherboard, so I’m back to a constantly overheating HP CQ56 laptop until I can afford a new motherboared etc.)
  3. Something’s wrong with my USB keyboard. (The original laptop keyboard is dead.)
  4. The Blender gods hate me.

Any clues? Known problems? Again, my system (despite how bad it is) has no problem recognizing hotkeys in every other program it uses. (Photoshop, Flash, OpenOffice, various web interfaces, various gaming interfaces, etc.) First time I EVER had a problem with a program not recognizing keyboard input.

TY!

2

I’m following this tutorial right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay7fgeQC1WI at 8:20 in the tutorial, he wants you to click on the “Use Nodes” button. Except I don’t seem to have one. No such button anywhere in the interface I can find.

The tutorial is using the Cycles Render engine. The default renderer is the Blender Render engine. You select which render engine you want to use with the dropdown list at the top of the blender interface

3

As for the hotkey issue:
The hotkeys are context sensitive and a big part of the context is controlled by where your mouse cursor is when pressing the button. So, if you’re mouse is over - let’s say - the outliner or the properties area of the viewport, nothing will happen when pressing the S-key, because “S” has no function in that contexts. Have your mouse over the 3D viewport and it will work.

Just guessing, of course. Between a non-functional main keyboard, a USB keyboard and an overheating notebook there is plenty of room for other possible causes…:wink:

4

I was in the Cycles Render, but I couldn’t find a Use Nodes button. The tutorial is using ver. 2.6, I have ver 2.71 so I’m wondering if that’s part of the problem, and Blender has maybe changed where that button lives. (I’ve already noticed other differences between what my program shows and some of the tutorials.

I’m not sure what to do to find this button and continue the tutorial.

5

AH! TY! I will experiment with where the mouse cursor is. That could definitely be part of the problem.

And yeah, I desperately need to get my motherboard fixed on my good computer. :eek:

6

The video you linked to (at 8:20)

Blender 2.71 (ignore the different colours)

Now what does yours look like ?

7

I also had this problem at around 9:40 in this video. I am working on version 2.79.

If your tutorial requires you to “use nodes” then you can just open the node editor instead.
Go to the bottom left and change view to “Node Editor.” Then Add [Shift + A] -> (Whatever you need). For my tutorial, we had added an Image Texture, and we already created an image called “Mushroom” in the UV/Image Editor, so for Image Texture I chose Mushroom. Then it worked.