Unusual Hypershade Nodes
 

Well, I'm finally getting into creating my own complex shaders, but I'm running into trouble real quick. Some nodes can't be created in hypershade by just going to the Create list and selecting them. If you've ever downloaded shaders and graphed them out, you've seen things like "time" nodes, "translateX" nodes, and nodes with X='s on them. All of these are actually attributes found in the attribute editor for objects.

Amazingly, I figured out how they make some of them. If you want something like a locator node to appear in hypershade, you simply select it, then choose (in hypershade) Graph>Add Selected to Graph and poof your locator node appears. I had no idea shape nodes and the like could be used for shaders until now, so I am really interested in it all.

The question is not "how do you get certain nodes into hypershade," but "where can you find nodes like "time," translateX/Y/Z, etc.?" I have tried displaying certain nodes in the hypergraph, but can't seem to find a way to do that in order to select them. I have tried selecting attributes in the channel box like translateX, then choosing "add selection to graph" but that does not work either. I have a few shaders with these nodes if you're completely lost as to what I'm talking about. Any ideas?

yes - you could create a connection from your shading node to a attribute you want to appear in hypershade. and then select the shading node, and say graph->input and output connections.

if you must have the darn time in your shading network, just open up the connection editor, hypershade and outliner at the same time. select you shader and in connection editor reload right or left (the -> to) part. now go to outliner, disable "show dag objects only" - click on time1 and back to connectio editor, and load the from side. now you can connect outime to the something in the shader. now select shader again - and graph input and output connections. you not only have time1 in hypergrapgh, you also got between shader and time1 a "timeToUnitConversion1" - real interesting. i would never have known how to create such a node - but it is in hypershade to play around now ;)

hope that helps

oops, everywhere i said hypergraph i meant hypershade :D

hope my answer was of use, as you did not want to know how to get things into hypershade - but getting the time in is the same as add selection to graph :D