Hi All, Im new to houdini and working on converting some models Ive made in the past. Since I want to be able to build shader networks, Im using the principled shader inside a material_builder to apply the textures. However when I do this, the textures are not displayed in the viewport. Textures are only being displayed if I use the built in texture inputs on the principled shader itself, which I dont want to do. How do I get my base color texture from inside the material builder to show up in the viewport? Also, if I layer up some textures through a color mix, can I have that displayed instead of one of the texture nodes? I feel like this is somehting that I should 'promote' but I dont know how to get this done.

Librarian, wow thank you!! this is like a fresnel shader on steroids exactly what I had hoped for, and more. Hats off sir!

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread but... Would it be possible to have a ramp drive the falloff instead of the edgefalloff node (which has a float input)? So that way I could customize how I want he falloff to be portrayed? for example, say have a gradient thats black at the facing angle, white at the 45 degree angle, and black again at the perpendicular angle? I too am used to doing this in Maya with a ramp and a sampler info node - the ramp gives a lot of flexibility.