During the holidy period my son began to show interest in" Dads" work in Poser,So whats a shader? he asked, haveing seen me tap shader into google and had frequently come across the word in his gamming.
Well i began to explain the differences between texture,materials and shaders and i suddenly realized I could give him only the basics and not even sure if i did a good jusb,moreover he didnt seemvery impressed.
So would some one be kind enough to give me a precise explination and reestablish my position as "Dad always has the answer ask him! LOL .
dam kids are so smart these days :)

oh sorry you meant shadERS

Cool Specs there Gramps did Santa give you those:) and
Happy new year to you.

Different apps define them in slightly different ways, but as I understand it -

Shader: Whatever surface you see on an object in your render (like say wood or plastic or concrete etc) is a result of a bunch of calculations done at render time. Some calculations feed into one another, some use info about your scene, some about what the render is doing and so on. Each of these little blocks of calculation or combinations thereof, is called a 'shader.' ie Shaders are the basic elements of the render process, they do everything from calculating the whorls on wood, the reflection of glass, the shadow of a cube to the red blush on an ear.

Texture: Just like shaders are little blocks of calculation, sometimes in a render you also need little blocks of stored information. It could be eg the warts on your aunt's face, or rust on a can or the photo of your dog... Each of these is called a texture. Usually textures are stuff that takes too long to do with calculation alone and it's easier to just get a photo or drawing/painting and use that instead. Textures also need directions on how they are to be applied, eg in the case of your aunt, you need some way to tell the render that there's a huge wart on her nose, but none on her forehead. This is done with what is called a UV map, basically a map that tells each pixel in a texture where it belongs on a surface.

Material: Materials are the end product of the chain/tree of shaders, textures and other such bits and pieces that make up each surface. So in a scene you would have a 'glass' material or a 'skin' material and each of which would consist of things like a 'reflection' shader or a 'pores' texture etc. Some apps also come with materials packaged as shaders that you can build on to do more complex materials, examples of which would be blinn, phong or clay shaders.

Thanks for your time and help.

p

I define them as :

shader - the entire definition for a material
texture - an image used as part of a shader
material - another term used for a shader.

depending on the application they are interchangable.

Some of the most exciting aspects of creating shaders is how it transforms a scene. Silk looks like silk, rocks like rocks, a glass of milk with the meniscus looks invitingly drinkable, a group of lit candles' glow illuminates a coffee cup, water rippling on a pond: this is all possible to some incredible shaders. If you haven't already, have a look at anything Bagginsbill has had to say on materials both here and on RDNA, as well as SemiDieu and others that have slipped my grey matter atm...
You might want to start a collection. :)

Can someone show me the way to a tutorial on creating shaders?

Thanks
~alice

Acadia has kindly provided links to how-tos for shaders for the most popular materials at the top of this forum: it's a stickied thread. And if I might be so bold, read just about anything by Bagginsbill.

There is a move afoot to put some of this information in the wiki, but I suspect that is going to take some time.