Does anyone know if nodes going to be the same in 2.5 as they are in 2.49?
Reason I asked is that I was going to spend some time really understanding them, since they are so confusing, and wasn’t sure if it was worth my time if it was going to be different in 2.5
Thanks anyone who answers!
I doubt there will be any big changes for nodes in 2.5. Understanding nodes in 2.49 will help you to understand nodes in 2.5 no matter what happens, or in any other 3d application that uses nodes…
If their keeping their promise of making “everything animatable”, we should see nodes with animatable values, and I’ve wanted that for a while.
If their keeping their promise of making “everything animatable”, we should see nodes with animatable values, and I’ve wanted that for a while.
Amen to that!
Praise the good lord eh?
/begin:self-promo/
You could try my book; Foundation Blender Compositing, available from Amazon, to help you on your Node journey. I cover each node in detail, as well as collectively, over the course of three chapters. Check it out!
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Durian Team have announced Nodes (comp) are going to need/get work done on them for 4K imaging. Tile rendering for reduced memory consumption etc. Maybe some revamped or new nodes added to existing.
But as you say there is no reason not to learn them in fear of changes, they’ll only be improvements not a total change in the way they work on the surface.
Maybe try these software agnostic books:
The Art and Science of Digital Compositing 2nd Edition, by Ron Brinkman and Digital Compositing For Film and Video by Steve Wright they will give you everything you could need to know about the theory of compositing and armed with that you’ll be able to apply it to blenders very basic current comping nodes, plus anything blender may get in the future and any other compositor application you may decide to use instead. 
The nodes may internally go through some big changes, but to the user should be very similar to the way they are in 2.49a. Any current books will still be very applicable, and Papasmurfs is a great book to read if you want to understand compositing and the node system.
Cheers,
Bob