Quote -  I'd like to start building shaders from the ground up. I've read up a bit from the manual but that shader room is awfully intimidating. I'm not even sure what the right starting point is. I won't try to do anything fancy but I'd like to know what the typical workflow for building shaders is. For instance, I've found it hard to gauge the effects of bumpmaps on some color/texture mixtures.

Don't fear about the texture room. It's not so hard ;)

 
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Holyforest,
Hundreds of shaders for Carrara