I am making "2x4"s!!! For consistency across the variations i have to use the same texture, otherwise they would look like they were made with different types of wood... but if you line them up you can see very obviously that they all use the same texture, and they look tiled. so for each object i have a unique node tree where the only difference between them is that i have changed the location in the mapping node...
problem is that i have to create an entirely new node tree for each unique 2x4, which can become a pain when making minor adjustments to the shaders. so i was wondering if there was a way to create a pointer to sections of a node tree and have the changes reflect across all references to that pre-defined node section. i have heard about instantiating node groups and am not entirely sure if this provides the functionality i desire (i worry about memory and render speed)
QUESTION
does blender allow for pointers to a node group? or reuse of a group of node without the memory hit of multiple instances?
EDIT: maybe it would be better to say i want a static node group....