Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Basic Shaders

As we mentioned before, Cycles materials are made of shaders. How can you add shaders to a material? When you add a new material, in the Surface panel you’ll see a Diffuse BSDF shader option. By clicking the shader’s name, you can pick a different shader option. Let’s look at some of the most commonly used shaders.

Diffuse BSDF: It’s the basic shader—just a colored surface.

Transparent BSDF: This shader makes the surface transparent.

Glossy BSDF: A shader that is shiny and reflective, by controlling its roughness you’ll get shine ...