(Solved) [Blender 2.8] Can we share shaders between materials?

bitinn

To be more precise, my understanding is each material in Blender has its own "shader graph": so can I share a single shader graph between materials, so that when I can update one material's shader graph, it will reflect changes in all other materials sharing the same shader graph.

Currently I have to duplicate materials and setup textures all over again when I make changes in shader editor, because their shader graph is not shared. There got to be a better way!

kio

I think you need to hustle with node groups.

Not sure if the new override stuff will work for this..

Michael Knubben

Yeah, that's what grouping is for! If you group a bunch of nodes, you can then load that group (it shows up under the add menu> groups) and it'll stay in sync.

@kio mentions the Static Overrides, which will show up in a preliminary form in 2.81, and he's right that as far as I understand them, that'd work too.

bitinn

Thx @kio @Michael Knubben , I will try it out, finger-crossed for nested node group support, as I am already using node group for my custom lighting