I see I arrived late as usual! This thread started in 2006.

kobaltkween,

A very big thanks for pointing out "Castle Poser". The "Material Room" section of the Tutorials, gives exactly the sort of information, that I suspect will be invaluable to someone like me who is about to take their first steps in trying to understand nodes and shader trees.

In fact, in the absence of a resource such as this, I doubt I would ever attempt to decipher the mysteries of the shaderTree.