Attached Link: Candle shader

*Most importantly, don't rely at all on what you see: trust the maths, get the head around the maths, *start* with maths... the nodes will grow out of that * Well I totally agree with that, but let me say it is not the *only* way to have fun in the nodes. I know that many non-mathematicians enjoy messing with nodes. This bothers people when I insist that they must learn the math, think in the math, deal only with the math.

And many non-magicians enjoy doing simple card tricks.

But nobody is going to hire one of those to do a 2-hour Vegas show.

If you want to be a material master, you must do the math. That's all I'm saying.

When I was asked to do a candle shader, I faffed about visually for a while. I tried to guess and visualize what to do. I wasted quite a bit of time doing this.

Then I grabbed myself by the throat and said to myself, do the f'ing math.

So I did. I calculated why and how light leaks down through a candle and comes out the side. Then I wrote a shader using the math formulas and it worked correctly immediately. All the experimenting and visualization was eliminated. It just worked.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)