How to use the node material editor effectively?

[eschac]

I like setting up materials with nodes-- in other renderers for C4D like Redshift or Octane, I can simply double click on a material and it will open up the node editor for that material. It's super fast and intuitive. I find the workflow in Corona a bit confusing, and I'm wondering how other people use it properly.

Based on watching the video on the Corona Youtube channel and my experience with Corona so far, it seems like the only way to use the node editor is to open it up manually, then manually drag and drop the desired material in, then start working; when finished, you delete those nodes from the editor. If you want to edit that material again later, you have to repeat all this. Alternatively, if you simply leave your materials in the node editor, it becomes a cluttered mess and is difficult to find anything you are looking to work on. You have to remember where you put any one material and manually navigate to it. Also when you have a number of materials on the canvas and drop a new material in, it will drop it on top of existing nodes and cause an overlapping mess.

I'm curious if people have a scene with a bunch of materials (ie any archviz scene), how do they work this way in an efficient manner?

Is there some way to set it up so that the node editor will only show one material at a time, more similar to the redshift/octane functionality?

[Nejc Kilar]

Personally I tend to keep the last 5-15 materials I'm working on in the same canvas but as you noted yourself everyone's workflow will probably be a bit different. When I do have 15 materials in one node view I try to clump them together thematically - so all the wall and floor materials and such are clumped in the top left "corner" and foliage is maybe next to that group but clearly visually separated. That said I also don't really mind dragging and dropping materials in the node editor at all.

You can also try creating new views (View -> Create view) for the subcategories of your material types. For example, all the architecture stuff could go in the architecture view and all the foliage materials could go in the foliage view. That is something I also sometimes do myself to keep things organized a bit better.

The thing with the node material editor being the way that it is, is that it allows you to have multiple unique nodes in front of you. That can be super useful because you can then also share nodes between materials real easily without having to kerfuffle with "reference" nodes and such. For example, if you set up a nice noise shader and you want it to be driving multiple materials at the same time... You can easily just plug it into multiple different / unique materials. Then if you make changes to it you can simply just make those changes and because that one node is plugged into other nodes everything will adapt seamlessly. So this way you can truly leverage the power of nodes.

As for the "nodes dropping on top of nodes" that is something to potentially be improved in the future.

[eschac]

Regarding the nodes overlapping-- it would be great if I dropped a new material in, it would actually go where I placed it on the canvas. Instead, the nodes will often import at the center of the canvas or other various locations (I still don't really know what the logic is with this), then I have to scroll around and move different nodes to work with the material I just dropped in. If I drop in a material and it goes somewhere that I can't immediately see, is there a way to zoom to selected? I found myself losing materials in a bigger scene.

Creating view tabs does seem to be the way to go when working with a larger number of materials, but also just creates more steps of navigation and organization.

So far it seems more efficient to use the basic C4D material editor for simpler materials, and only use the nodes for things that you know will have a fair amount of customization. Maybe other people are just used to that workflow, but coming from the other main C4D render engines, I'm used to utilizing nodes for every material. Maybe I have to unlearn that a bit when working with Corona.