After going through the course, I realized I could follow the instructions and get good results but still when I tried to “fly solo” the materials didn’t look just right. So, I have been getting lots of practice through various youtube videos. A good series is Ryan King’s playlist for material nodes: Blender Procedural Material Tutorials - YouTube
By doing many of these tutorials, I found I was doing the same things over and over (and he explained why each time) and the repetition helped solidify it. (I’m 54, and the older I get, the more repetition I need to remember anything! I used to pick up stuff instantly…)
They are less advanced than what was in this course (though that also means they don’t make my rig hang so often, but they still do sometimes!!!). In general, the later videos are better than the earlier ones (and use later versions of Blender) because he was learning as he went as well! But I went through the Snowy Mountain video and did this one. It has to be viewed in Cycles (Eevee will stutter and slow down!!!).
I’ll give you the blend file (for Blender 3.6.5). You have to manually set Cycles render in the viewport. It “could” hang your system (there is a lot of geometry there, as well as shader nodes!) and it definitely slows mine down. Here it is: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ar9oADZiQciZ_sdbw-3BFIdSI7mF1w?e=9PyZWt
And if you want to see the node setup (it’s in a node group), here are screenshots (yep, I know, they are eyecharts—hence the blend file):
