CGAN Dec25 -Gingerbread House - WIPs

Site became temporarily unavailable and ate my post! Then it refused to "paste an image" when I thought I'd copied the error message...  

 

When you can't sleep, obviously you start fiddling in blender... 
I have windows. But still no frosting. And I want to make pretzels or pretzel sticks but I'm not sure how to best add "salt crystals" or if I should just ignore those... 
 

 

(I did try to search but the guide I found on adding sprinkles either left something out or just didn't work the same for me... )

AND
If I want two similar materials that are not identical, how the heck do I copy a material so I can adjust it instead of recreate it from scratch? I'm fairly certain it can be done and that I read or saw something about it but that doesn't mean I can figure it out.

In the shading/node window this middle button duplicates and assigns an identical material that you can then change.

 

I was also gonna try and do some scattered salt crystals this afternoon for another "gummy" texture. You can do it with particle/hair systems or geometry nodes. The latter is complicated.
I'll see how it goes.

I have icing. Not finished though. And it looks reasonably icing-y in the material preview but more like old yellow plastic in the render preview...  
I still have to make some decisions on stuff, too... I'm no good with decisions. 

 

This is looking good. All the pieces are coming together very well.
I didn't get to do the thing I wanted. Pesky chores that I'd forgotten about.

I didn't forget about my chores. They didn't get done anyway.

Hmm, this isn't working.
Gonna have to go watch a YouTube tutorial.

For the texture, not the chores.

Good. Watch the video, then tell me how to do it.

Well I already know how to scatter one object on another, done that before...

Make your two objects and select the big one. Add a modifier and choose Particle System. (That's System not Instance.)

 

Then go into the Particles tab at the side. Click Hair and Advanced. And further down open up Render and change Render As Path to Render as Object. Then just below select your small object from the list.

 

You'll also see options there to change/randomise the scale and rotation etc.

EDIT
The issue I'm having is making the little things look "sugary". I can sort of make the bigger thing look "gummy" by just turning up the Transmission value in the BSDF node and playing with the roughness although if you're using eevee then there are a couple of extra Screen-Space Reflection/Refraction options that you need to check for transparencies to work.

Edit 2.
I hate Transmission/Transparency.
*sigh*