surfaceShader

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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

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

The following quick index only shows top-level attributes (too many attributes to show them all): materialAlphaGain, miAbsorbs, miAngle, miColor (3), miDeriveFromMaya, miDiffuse, miFrameBufferWriteFactor, miFrameBufferWriteFlags, miFrameBufferWriteOperation, miNormalCamera (3), miReflectivity, miRefractions, miRefractiveIndex, miShinyness, miSpecularColor (3), miSpreadX, miSpreadY, miTranslucence, miTranslucenceFocus, miTransparency (3), miWhiteness (3), outColor (3), outGlowColor (3), outMatteOpacity (3), outTransparency (3)

Long name (short name)	Type	Default	Flags
outColor (oc)	float3	0.0, 0.0, 0.0
Out Color. Connect another attribute to this to control the color of the material with that attribute.
outColorR (ocr) float 0.0 Out Color red value
outColorG (ocg) float 0.0 Out Color green value
outColorB (ocb) float 0.0 Out Color blue value
outTransparency (ot)	float3	0.0, 0.0, 0.0
Out Transparency. Connect another attribute to this to control the transparency of the material.
outTransparencyR (otr) float 0.0 Out Transparency red value
outTransparencyG (otg) float 0.0 Out Transparency green value
outTransparencyB (otb) float 0.0 Out Transparency blue value
outMatteOpacity (omo)	float3	1.0, 1.0, 1.0
Out Matte Opacity. Connect another attribute to this to control the opacity of the material's matte (alpha) channel.
outMatteOpacityR (omor) float 0.0 Out Matte Opacity red value
outMatteOpacityG (omog) float 0.0 Out Matte Opacity green value
outMatteOpacityB (omob) float 0.0 Out Matte Opacity blue value
outGlowColor (og)	float3	0.0, 0.0, 0.0
Out Glow Color. Connect another attribute to this to control the glow color of the material.
outGlowColorR (ogr) float 0.0 Out Glow Color red value
outGlowColorG (ogg) float 0.0 Out Glow Color green value
outGlowColorB (ogb) float 0.0 Out Glow Color blue value
miDeriveFromMaya (mifm)	bool	true
Derive photon shader parameters from the shading node if enabled, otherwise use explicit mental ray attributes.
miShinyness (mis)	float	10
Photon shader shinyness parameter to control glossy reflection and refraction.
miAngle (mia)	float	0
Photon shader angle parameter to control direction of anisotropic feature.
miSpreadX (misx)	float	10
Photon shader x spread parameter to control size of anisotropic feature in x direction.
miSpreadY (misy)	float	5
Photon shader spread parameter to control size of anisotropic feature in y direction.
miWhiteness (miwn)	float3
Photon shader whiteness parameter.
miWhitenessR (miwnr) float 0.5 Red component
miWhitenessG (miwng) float 0.5 Green component
miWhitenessB (miwnb) float 0.5 Blue component
miSpecularColor (misc)	float3
Photon shader specular color parameter.
miSpecularColorR (miscr) float 0.5 Red component
miSpecularColorG (miscg) float 0.5 Green component
miSpecularColorB (miscb) float 0.5 Blue component
miReflectivity (mirf)	float	0.5
Photon shader reflectivity parameter.
miRefractiveIndex (miri)	float	1
Photon shader index-of-refraction parameter.
miRefractions (mirc)	bool	true
Photon shader refractions parameter.
miAbsorbs (miab)	bool	true
Photon shader absorption parameter.
miDiffuse (midc)	float	0.8
Photon shader diffuse parameter.
miColor (mic)	float3
Photon shader base color parameter.
miColorR (micr) float 0.5 Red component
miColorG (micg) float 0.5 Green component
miColorB (micb) float 0.5 Blue component
miTransparency (mit)	float3
Photon shader transparency parameter.
miTransparencyR (mitr) float 0 Red component
miTransparencyG (mitg) float 0 Green component
miTransparencyB (mitb) float 0 Blue component
miTranslucence (mitc)	float	0
Photon shader translucency parameter.
miTranslucenceFocus (mitf)	float	0.5
Photon shader translucence focus parameter.
miNormalCamera (minc)	float3
Port to connect bump node for photon shader.
miNormalCameraX (mincx) float 0 X component
miNormalCameraY (mincy) float 0 Y component
miNormalCameraZ (mincz) float 0 Z component
materialAlphaGain (maga)	float	1.0
Material Alpha Gain
miFrameBufferWriteOperation (mifo)	enum	1
Operation to use when writing shader results to frame buffers
miFrameBufferWriteFlags (mifl)	integer	0
Bitfield of flags for write operation. Currently only the first bit has any affect. It sets the shader to use the scale factor parameter when writing to frame buffers.
miFrameBufferWriteFactor (miff)	float	1.0
Scale factor for frame buffer write operation