| Sprite | Render Tree Usage
Category: Processing > Raytracing
Shader Family: Surface Material
Output: Color
This shader is designed to render a sprite or billboard on a grid. Transparency is infinite, because the shader ignores the
Ray Depth settings in the render options. This means that you can have thousands of sprites at different depths and see all
of them correctly without having to set extraordinarily high Ray Depth values.
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The shader's name. Enter any name you like, or leave the default.
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Sprite
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Defines the color input that shades the sprite's surface and the alpha value that defines its transparency. You can set a
color using the sliders, but this parameter is typically connected to a texture image.
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Stencil
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Specifies how transparency is created and used for the sprite: uses the color input's alpha as the transparency channel.
uses RGB intensity as transparency.
uses the maximum RGB as the transparency. This works best when the image is on a white background.
uses the minimum RGB as the transparency. This works best when the image is on a black background.
use Average of RGB as the transparency.
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Inverts the computed/extracted alpha value.
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Allows you to alter the depth pixel data based on the alpha channel, so the depth (Zpic) channel will have the outline of
the alpha channel. The threshold value determines what values are inside the cutout alpha or outside of it. The default value
is 0.9, so values above 0.9 are considered to be outside the cutout, and will take on the depth of the object behind the sprite.
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Matte
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Enables an external matte and ignores the alpha value set in the color input.
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A color input used to accept an external alpha channel to use as a matte for the sprite.
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Render Tree Usage
Connect this shader to the material node's surface input to create a flat, transparent sprite object. You can connect texture
images to both the color and matte inputs to define the sprite's shading and transparency.
