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

Anatomy of a Node

Before you start using the Node Editor, you need to know how a node works and what its parts are. In Figure 14.3, you can see the dissection of a node into its basic parts. (In this case, it’s an RGB Curves node, which is used to make color corrections to the nodes you put into it).

Noodles: The little colored dots at the left and right sides of a node are called noodles. They support the connections. The noodles on the left are inputs, while those to the right are outputs. Their color tells you what each of those connectors is for: gray noodles are for values (or grayscale images), yellow ones are for RGB images, and blue ones ...