The Element Graph is the swiss-army knife of project types in InstaMAT. Create stunning materials, build powerful mesh-processing pipelines, and combine different mediums such as images, meshes, and point clouds. Expressions and arithmetic can also be integrated directly into the same graph along side your materials to customize and direct exposed parameters. These parameters can be adjusted within InstaMAT Studio, InstaMAT Pipeline, or in our integrations.
¶ Getting Started with the Element Graph
The following articles can help you quickly get started with the Element Graph by providing an overview of InstaMAT's node-based workflow fundamentals:
- Canvas Navigation: Learn how to navigate the Canvas interface.
- Node-Based Workflow Key Concepts: Uncover the power of a node-based workflow by tapping into its non-linear nature. Learn about graph inheritance, making connections, exposing inputs and outputs, and how to create infinite variations by changing a graph's execution seed.
- Quick Search: Discover how InstaMAT's context-sensitive search box supercharges adding nodes, inserting projects, and creating graph inputs and outputs.
¶ Next-Generation Workflows
With an assortment of graph types, easy drag-and-drop integration with other InstaMAT projects, and the ability to combine images, meshes, and point clouds, the Element Graphs becomes an infinite playground for building dynamic assets and procedural pipelines.
- Exporting Meshes with Embedded Textures using Scene Nodes: Discover how to export entire scenes with textures embedded using the Element Graph and scene nodes.
- Automatically Unwrap a Mesh's UVs with the Mesh UV Unwrap Node: Learn how to unwrap a mesh's UVs in InstaMAT Studio with the Mesh UV Unwrap Node.
- Working with UDIMs in the Canvas: Discover how to texture meshes set up with multiple UDIMs using nodes with InstaMAT's Element Graph.
- Adding Projects and Resources to the User Library: Adding projects and resources to the User Library makes it possible to access them in other InstaMAT Studio projects and via InstaMAT's integrations.
- Template Projects: Learn how to create custom templates to quickly get started with a new project that meets your conventions.
- Assigning the Proper Color Space to ElementImage Inputs: Learn how to assign the proper color space for ElementImage value types in an Element graph.
- Grayscale Permutations for Elements Discover how to set up an Element so that a user can switch between color and grayscale permutations.
To learn more about Element Graphs, you can watch our video on node-based material creation.