Shaders and Mats Etc.

IceDragonArt

This is probably a silly question but are shaders basically a texture applied to something?  and what a mat? Is that applied to figures like a texture?  Sometimes the two words plus textures seem to be interchangeable

and sometimes, not so much

IceCrMn

Yes,,they are. "Mats" is a slang term which is a short word for "Materials" and is used to describe a set of surface settings which can include colors, textures, maps of different sorts (displacement, normal, bump, specular, there are more, these are just some off the top of my head), and/or a shader.

Shaders are a bit more complicated, I don't understand much of them, but there's some color math going on, some geometry equations, photon particle absorption calculations,,I also believe there is some voodoo going on in there as well.

fixmypcmike

The words get used in various ways, but in DS the difference is that a Material Preset applies to particular surfaces, while a Shader Preset can be applied to any surface.  For example, a material preset for a human figure may have settings for a surface named "Lips", and it will only apply them to a surface with that name.  In both cases, what's being applied may include images from jpg's as well as numerical settings.

IceDragonArt

Okay that makes a bit more sense.  And I believe the voodoo part as well.  Of course, to me, most math is voodoo so its all one and the same lol.  I don't mind pushing buttons but needed a reference point to start at.  I finally got my work space organized with folders that make sense to me so I am not off spending half of my limited time looking for something but wasn't quite sure what to do with the shaders etc.  I think those can be organized a bit later, they seem to mostly be where they should be under the shader tab lol.

mjc1016

Emphasis on the word Preset, please.

A shader is actually external compiled code to expand the functionality of the renderer.

Richard Haseltine

A shader describes how a surface behaves when lit and rendered.

Textures are image files that the shader uses to determine the basic colour and strength of different effects - which ones wil depend on the shader.

Materials and Shader presets specify which shader to use, with what settings and textures. "Mats" are usually Materials presets.

IceDragonArt

Thank you!