From BlenderWiki

Introduction to Nodes

In Blender, a Node is an element in a diagram representing the starting data, processing steps, and output data for materials, textures and whole images created in Blender. Each node has one or more inputs, and one output, which can be joined by paths showing the flow of data between nodes.

When you create a system of nodes (otherwise known as a "noodle"), you're describing a data-processing pipeline of sorts, where data "flows from" nodes which describe various sources, "flows through" nodes which represent various processing and filtering stages, and finally "flows into" nodes which represent outputs or destinations. You can connect the nodes to one another in many different ways, and you can adjust "knobs," or parameters, that control the behavior of each node. This gives you a tremendous amount of creative control. And, it will very quickly become intuitive.

The Node Editor

The Node Editor in Blender is a graphical facility which can be used for several different purposes. Once the basic concepts have been grasped, the Node Editor is a provides a quick, useful and intuitive tool for several common tasks in the Blender suite:

  a) Construction of materials for the Blender Internal or Game Engine renderers.
  b) Construction of textures for the Blender Internal or Game Engine renderers.
  c) Construction of materials and textures for the Cycles renderer.
  d) Compositing.

The purpose of this Chapter is to describe to basic controls and methodology of the Node Editor, and describe how it can be switched to carry out the different tasks described above. The individual Chapters of this manual will then give details of how the Node Editor is actually used for each purpose.

End

Nodes Proposal

• Introduction to Nodes
  • Node Editor
    • Node Groups

-|}