The shaders we have seen so far are quite simple and easily readable in the Node Editor window, but for several materials we'll see in this Cookbook, the node connections will be a lot more complex and confusing. One more aid we can use to improve the readability of these nodes are the frames. We can use them to visually organize the shaders' network.
Let's see the use of a frame with a simple shader that we already know:
- Go to the Node Editor window and press Shift + A to add a Frame (press Shift + A and navigate to Layout | Frame). Move the mouse to place its arrow over the nodes, and notice that it always appears to be below them, as shown in the following screenshot:
Adding a Frame to the network inside the Node Editor window
- Move the mouse cursor to a corner of the frame. It turns into a cross, which means that you can click and drag to resize the corners and the sides of the frame to include the desired nodes as shown in the following screenshot:
Resizing the Frame to comprise all the nodes
- Box-select the nodes you want to arrange with the frame (in our case, all of them), then press Shift, and select the frame (or just press A to deselect the frame and box-select everything so that the frame is selected again as the active object). Press Ctrl + P to parent them.
Now that the nodes are parented to the frame, we can select and move it, and all the contained nodes will follow it as a single object.
It's still possible to select the single nodes inside the frames and arrange their individual position and connections. To add a new node to the network, we will do as usual (press Shift + A | …) and then parent it to the frame as well.
- With the frame still selected, go to the Properties panel to the right of the Node Editor window (Press N if not already present). Just like the case of single nodes, in the Node subpanel, we can change the Name of the frame, assign a Label name visible in the Node Editor window (I wrote
BasicShader), and also assign a color. - In the Properties subpanel right below the Color subpanel, we can change the size of the label name, which is set to
20by default, and by unchecking the Shrink item, we can freely resize the frame bigger, which otherwise encloses the nodes with a fixed boundary (the default setting), which is shown in the following screenshot for your reference:
The Frame with label and color