Learning and using Textures/Shader nodes...Am I doing it right and the Spectacular textures Question

[indianastilts (Adam)]

Hi All,

I am learning Shading strings/nodes and getting the hand of it with these Planet Earth Models. I believe I am doing the Spectaular shading incorrect wth the strings/nodes and hoping for some support on this kindly please. Here are my workflow so far:

Planets so far (using diff textures but basically the same):

My String/Nodes on the Main Earth Material.

I think or well Know, that I am doing the Earth Spectacular texture incorret and assume it needs a node like the diffuse and Bump textures?

For Diffuse, I have used texture twice, put into a normal map node and diffuse BSP.
Bump, I have used a texture into a multiply and into the displacement.

I have put the spectulars, which are black and white on the sea and land (inverted on both and plugged straight into the spectacular string…Is that correct?

Does my strings look right?

I also have a seperate material for Cloud and Atmosphere which are different layers, that work well. I used Transparent to mix shader on those.

Below is main nodes/strings for planet earth.

Also below is the textures I am using.

Ignore the Core one as that is for my core model and ignore the Athmos_ as not using it.

[Okidoki]

Just look at other setups… Why not just use

• Diffuse for (diffuse) basecolor
• Spec for Specular
• Bump with using bump node to get a normal and connect to normal and not displacement

(bump is faking light directions, normal is using light directions, displacement is transforming geometry directions)

Using a mix shader with Principled BSDF makes only sense if you are more advanced in this…
Specular tint is very special… do you need it? And if you use the same imeage with the same options… then why use it two images nodes… why use diffuse for bump if you have a bump map… ??

[indianastilts (Adam)]

Hi @Okidoki

I have 2 Specs. One for Earth black and sea white and another being opposite. I can’t plug them both into Spec only 1, so I have put 1 in Spec and 1 in Spec Tint but think that is wrong?

I will correct the Bump and Diffuse

[indianastilts (Adam)]

Hi @Okidoki

I have updated the Nodes, thank you. See below Screenshot. it is looking better now actually. I have removed the other nodes.

It leaves me with the 2 Spec textures. One for the land and other sea. Assuming I can only use one of them then and not plug both in, as wanted to do diff spec on both.

[joseph (J)]

You can use both, you’ll just need a MixRGB shader:

[indianastilts (Adam)]

@joseph

Legend!! Thanks alot that worked I put them on a mixer, then plugged into Spec.

I can see you plugged your texture into Spec and then another one above the output??

[joseph (J)]

Glad it worked That “Viewer” node is something you can use to preview things, if you turn on the Node Wrangler add-on in your Preferences, you can Ctrl Shift Click on a node to preview it

[indianastilts (Adam)]

Love it thanks alot