Quote - so I have no maths to speak of... kind of. I can do algerbra in my head. the teacher would show us a problem on the board and I'd get into trouble for just writing the answer. he wanted to see the working out. ok it was simple puzzles, but I never did any working out. I just saw the answer. if I worked it out, I'd get it wrong everytime.

I don't think "intuiting" one's way around the mat room is out of the question... depending what's being attempted... and once a few principles are grasped... not numbers.. just what nodes connect to what other nodes...

...patterns if you like.

That's really how I work. I see patterns and try and replicate... slightly rearrange them.

That's probably why I start best from complete working examples... i.e. I've managed to splice bits of different BB derived shaders together, or onto other texture maps... and get something working out.

On occassion.

Other times I haven't. LOL :lol:

But, it does seem, the more I look at example BB shaders (for example), presented as visual layout patterns, in the mat room, the more I see the sections of nodes therein as kind of sub patterns I can start to (slightly more succesfully) play around with.. without necessarily understanding all the numbers.