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

For example, if you connect the Translate attribute of an object to the Out Color attribute of a Volume Shader, then the color of the shader will depend on the position of the object in space. If you are connecting this node manually to a shading group, then you should connect the Out Color attribute of the Volume Shader to the Volume Material input of the the shading group. (This is sometimes called the Volume Shader input.) (Most other shaders connect to the Surface Shader input.) In the table below, important attributes have their names indicated in bold in the decription column.

This node is MP safe

Node name Parents Classification MFn type Compatible function sets
volumeShader node shader/volume/utility kVolumeShader kBase
kNamedObject
kDependencyNode
kVolumeShader

Related nodes

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

Attributes (12)

outColor, outColorB, outColorG, outColorR, 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 volume shader.
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 Shader transparency. Higher values (that is, brighter colors) make the object more transparent; darker colors make it more opaque.
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 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