Hi, Suppose I want to create a brandnew material using material nodes. Furthermore suppose thate this material should ook like cupper (only a an example…) What of the following ways to achieve this is recommended/better ? A.) Create a basic cupper material the traditional way, press “Use nodes” insert a material node and select exactly this basic material as starting point. B) Create a basic default material, press “Use nodes”, insert a material node, create a cupper material and select this as material for that node. C) Some other was of makeing noodles, I currently dont know :O) I still have problems with these “initial steps”… Any help is very appreciated. Thank you very much in advance! mcc
What I’m getting from my experiments is that it mostly (with one exception) does not matter whether you use method a) or b). But I have not yet tested every combination of every button 
The one exception is ZTransp, if you would like to use ZTransp for the node, you have to use method a). Or, as an alternative: use a dummy object for the other material and activate ZTransp there.
Any insight is much appreciated.
OK, this clarifies it:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Release_Notes/Notes242/NodeMaterials
“- In a Node Tree, any Material can be inserted, including itself. Only in that case the Material is being used itself for shading.”