Tutorials?

[Sorry-Im-Stupid]

Since I've managed to get Malt mostly working, thanks to @pragma37 , I'm now playing around with actual textures, and node trees.
And I now have the difficult task of figuring out what all these nodes actually do. I've been perusing youtube looking for any kind of explanation of the malt nodes and node systems, and finding almost nothing. I would also like to know if there's any way to build a texture tree in eevee and translate/link it to the Malt node tree.
I'd really appreciate if anyone could point me to anything like this, but if it doesn't exist, perhaps we can build an infographic here to explain these. If I figure it out, I'd be happy to make a series of tutorials on youtube over time, for future noobs.
Thoughts?

[pragma37]

This is the only tutorial for Malt nodes, AFAIK:
https://youtu.be/tE99jgCCcNE

And I'll keep posting examples in #94.

Aside from that, you can always get my latest Malt scene on Patreon and the previous ones on Gumroad.
I want to update them to use nodes, but all of them are code-only at the moment.

This is an aspect where I hope to get some help from the community.
I'm pretty bad at making tutorials and it takes me a long time to record them.

That said, if you have any specific question about how to do something, open a thread in the Q&A section and I'll do my best to solve it.

[Sorry-Im-Stupid]

I've made some progress on the style I want, with a matcap made in eevee, and some random math in Malt to make the noise I've been looking for. It's actually a bit more noise than I want, so if anyone can tell me how to turn it down just a bit, and get those fireflies out of the dark areas, I'd appreciate it.
Here's the render, matcap, and the node tree:

[Sorry-Im-Stupid]

I figured out how to tame the noise, just put a clamp between the get_random, and the float_multiply.
I was reminded of another peculiarity, how the image doesn't keep the noise effect very well if I save it in .png mode. It works perfectly in .jpg.

[pragma37]

Oh my! There are many wrong things there. 😅

1. You are mixing the fractional part of a number and the tangent of another one, but mixing with a factor of 1 means you are just using the second input.
2. You are using it as the seed for get_random, but you don't need any special setup for that, just leave it at 0.
3. I have no idea what's your rationale for using the BRDF_specular_cook_torrance like that, but that's super wrong. Maybe you are looking for get_specular ?
   I would recommend you to stick to the Common, Node Utils and NPR MeshShader nodes. Everything else is only useful for advanced use cases.
4. Shadow color is just for transparent shadows (this needs a better name).
5. I'm not sure you understood the vec4_from_vec3 function. "v" is the RGB part and "a" is the alpha.
6. Are you actually using the extra Outputs? Those are available from the RenderLayer input, for post-processing.

I know I can't use an eevee structure inside malt, but surely there's a way to create a procedural equation in eevee and link the output such that malt can use it? I really only need voronoi, noise, and some math.

I would bake the textures instead of using matcaps. There's currently no voronoi or cell noise in Malt but I plan to add them soon.

Also, please, try to make one thread per question and keep them as specific as possible, so it's easier for other users to search for already answered questions.

[Sorry-Im-Stupid]

Well, interesting about the random seed. Is there a reason that even has an input, if that's how it works?
I use the cook_torrance node because it's more adjustable than the regular specular.
And you're right, I don't understand how any of these things work. That's why I want to make a proper informational.
But the PixelOutput thing only takes a vec4 into color, so...
I don't know what these are supposed to do, but even individually, none of them do anything but dark grey to black. The colors don't show at all.

[pragma37]

Well, interesting about the random seed. Is there a reason that even has an input, if that's how it works?

If you need more than one random number (per pixel and per sample) in your shader, you use different seeds for each get_random node, but you can just use 0, 1, 2... and so on. It also allows you tweak the seed until you get the random result you want.

But the PixelOutput thing only takes a vec4 into color, so...

So you set the alpha either to 1 or 0 (or enable transparency if that's what you want).

I don't know what these are supposed to do, but even individually, none of them do anything but dark grey to black. The colors don't show at all.

Again, the ShadingModels function are for advanced stuff.
http://graphicrants.blogspot.com/2013/08/specular-brdf-reference.html
http://www.codinglabs.net/article_physically_based_rendering_cook_torrance.aspx