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Use a Surface Shader when you want to completely control the color, transparency and matte opacity of a material. This kind of shader does no shading calculation of any kind. Rather, it allows you connect other attributes directly to its color, glow color, and transparency. It completely ignores everything else that would normally affect a shader.

For example, if you connect the Translate attribute of an object to the Out Color attribute of a Surface Shader, then the color of the shader will depend on the position of the object in space. As the object moves, it will change color. In the table below, important attributes have their names indicated in bold in the description column.

This node is MP safe

Node name Parents Classification MFn type Compatible function sets
surfaceShader node shader/surface/utility:drawdb/shader/surface/surfaceShader kSurfaceShader kBase
kNamedObject
kDependencyNode
kSurfaceShader

Related nodes

lambert, reflect, phongE, phong, blinn, anisotropic, volumeShader, simpleVolumeShader, displacementShader, layeredShader, useBackground, defaultShaderList, shadingMap

Attributes (17)

materialAlphaGain, outColor, outColorB, outColorG, outColorR, outGlowColor, outGlowColorB, outGlowColorG, outGlowColorR, outMatteOpacity, outMatteOpacityB, outMatteOpacityG, outMatteOpacityR, outTransparency, outTransparencyB, outTransparencyG, outTransparencyR

Long name (short name) Type Default Flags
outColor (oc) float3 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Color. Connect another attribute to this to control the color of the material with that attribute.
outColorR (ocr) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Color red value
outColorG (ocg) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Color green value
outColorB (ocb) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Color blue value
outTransparency (ot) float3 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Transparency. Connect another attribute to this to control the transparency of the material.
outTransparencyR (otr) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Transparency red value
outTransparencyG (otg) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Transparency green value
outTransparencyB (otb) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Transparency blue value
outMatteOpacity (omo) float3 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Matte Opacity. Connect another attribute to this to control the opacity of the material's matte (alpha) channel.
outMatteOpacityR (omor) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Matte Opacity red value
outMatteOpacityG (omog) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Matte Opacity green value
outMatteOpacityB (omob) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Matte Opacity blue value
outGlowColor (og) float3 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Glow Color. Connect another attribute to this to control the glow color of the material.
outGlowColorR (ogr) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Glow Color red value
outGlowColorG (ogg) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Glow Color green value
outGlowColorB (ogb) float 0.0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Out Glow Color blue value
materialAlphaGain (maga) float 1.0 outputinputconnectablestorablekeyable
Material Alpha Gain