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Captain Disillusion has dropped another great one, this time it's the Horrors of the Alpha channel ! CBR

This one actually left me a little confused. The general takeaway seemed that hes suggesting premultiplied is better because its somehow done more of the work already, and that straight alphas need more internal calculations. But that seems to be missing the biggest downfall of premultiplied, in that the alpha channel is pre-baked against a specific colour. This is ok if its all alpha'd against black or white, but if theres more than one colour in the background then youre screwed. Straight alphas on the other hand are only ever merged with their own colours and will work against any background with no fringing. Premultiplied alphas also fare badly with soft transparent parts such as fire, smoke etc.

I'll just say I'm really happy with the rate of new developments over the past few releases. Feels like exciting stuff is coming, for me anyway. And there is no shortage of stuff already to learn. It's like C4D has been rebuilt like the Six Million Dollar Man (if you remember that show) and is now flexing its muscles and getting ready to kick ass. Maybe EJ was just getting excited or something.

The dirt node is just a layman terms. It doesn't really provide dirt per se. It's technically a curvature. So in redshift it is called curvature node. You can also use AO node on top of it.