Yep, read all those links, hun, but they all left some burning questions, Acadia. Essentially the same questions you had some time back which you might have found were satisfactorily answered with gastronomic metaphors, but being the Dummie I am, I need pretty much the a + b = c type of answer.

Hence the name of this thread.

What we're looking at here is node behaviour with an objective - essentially the same objective you had, incidentally - knowing what to use why and how. Apparently there have been heaps of experiments done by Those-That-Know to validate nodal behaviour. None of this is published anywhere.

So they know, and the rest of us don't.

This is an effort to fill that gap. I'm not just going to do experiments and keep them my little secret. I want ALL Poser users who want to get the noggin around material room nodes to take advantage of my experiments, as pathetic as my experiments might be. Means THEY don't have to do them, right?

Now, if that exercise has been done in any of those links I missed it. Please point it out to me if it has been done, because what I am am undertaking is massive and daunting but it must be done!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks