Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Every material in 3D is an attempt to imitate how light behaves when it hits a surface. Once you understand that, the shader editor stops being a wall of nodes. This course takes you through every shader Blender offers, one at a time.
Watch on CG Cookie: core.cgcookie.com
Buy this course: superhivemarket.com/products/core-5-materials
Get all 11 courses: superhivemarket.com/products/core-lts
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- What a material actually is, and the bidirectional scattering idea underneath every render engine
- The shader editor, material creation, and render settings
- Glossy, diffuse, anisotropy, mixing and adding shaders, transparent and holdout
- Refraction and glass, translucency, subsurface scattering, metallic, and ray portal
- Volume scatter, volume absorption, and volume coefficients
- Emission, sheen, and toon shading
- Fresnel, the relationship between Fresnel and roughness, and how to read a real surface
- The Principled BSDF, Principled Hair, and Principled Volume
- Node organization, user input, utilities, and sharing materials between files
WHAT YOU WILL BUILD
Guided shading exercises throughout, plus a full material pass on the specimen tank from Fundamentals of Mesh Modeling. Project files are provided if you did not take that course.
INSIDE THE COURSE
01 Imitating light, creating materials, the shader editor, render settings
02 The shader library, from glossy and diffuse through volumes and toon
03 Fresnel, roughness, and the Principled shaders
04 Organization, utilities, sharing materials, and the final challenge
29 lessons. Around 3 hours 20 minutes. Recorded in Blender 5.2 LTS. Project files included.
TAKE THIS ONE FIRST
Materials and Texturing are taught as two separate courses because they are two separate ideas. Start here. Texturing builds directly on it.
ABOUT CORE V2
CORE V2 is an 11 course Blender fundamentals series, rebuilt from the ground up for Blender 5.2 LTS. Mesh Modeling, Digital Sculpting, Lighting, Materials and Shading, Texturing, Animation, Rigging, Physics, Compositing, Grease Pencil, and Geometry Nodes. More than 45 hours of instruction, project files, exercises, and challenges. Blender 5.2 is a long term support release, so what you learn here stays current for years.
FREE BLENDER TUTORIAL
Model a glowing honey jar in about 14 minutes: honeyjar.cgcookie.com
CG COOKIE
core.cgcookie.com
#Blender #Blender3D #BlenderMaterials
Every material in 3D is an attempt to imitate how light behaves when it hits a surface. Once you understand that, the shader editor stops being a wall of nodes. This course takes you through every shader Blender offers, one at a time.
Watch on CG Cookie: core.cgcookie.com
Buy this course: superhivemarket.com/products/core-5-materials
Get all 11 courses: superhivemarket.com/products/core-lts
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- What a material actually is, and the bidirectional scattering idea underneath every render engine
- The shader editor, material creation, and render settings
- Glossy, diffuse, anisotropy, mixing and adding shaders, transparent and holdout
- Refraction and glass, translucency, subsurface scattering, metallic, and ray portal
- Volume scatter, volume absorption, and volume coefficients
- Emission, sheen, and toon shading
- Fresnel, the relationship between Fresnel and roughness, and how to read a real surface
- The Principled BSDF, Principled Hair, and Principled Volume
- Node organization, user input, utilities, and sharing materials between files
WHAT YOU WILL BUILD
Guided shading exercises throughout, plus a full material pass on the specimen tank from Fundamentals of Mesh Modeling. Project files are provided if you did not take that course.
INSIDE THE COURSE
01 Imitating light, creating materials, the shader editor, render settings
02 The shader library, from glossy and diffuse through volumes and toon
03 Fresnel, roughness, and the Principled shaders
04 Organization, utilities, sharing materials, and the final challenge
29 lessons. Around 3 hours 20 minutes. Recorded in Blender 5.2 LTS. Project files included.
TAKE THIS ONE FIRST
Materials and Texturing are taught as two separate courses because they are two separate ideas. Start here. Texturing builds directly on it.
ABOUT CORE V2
CORE V2 is an 11 course Blender fundamentals series, rebuilt from the ground up for Blender 5.2 LTS. Mesh Modeling, Digital Sculpting, Lighting, Materials and Shading, Texturing, Animation, Rigging, Physics, Compositing, Grease Pencil, and Geometry Nodes. More than 45 hours of instruction, project files, exercises, and challenges. Blender 5.2 is a long term support release, so what you learn here stays current for years.
FREE BLENDER TUTORIAL
Model a glowing honey jar in about 14 minutes: honeyjar.cgcookie.com
CG COOKIE
core.cgcookie.com
#Blender #Blender3D #BlenderMaterials
