Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Nodes/Input

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Input Nodes

Camera Data

View Vector

A Camera space vector from the camera to the shading point.

View Z Depth

View Distance

Distance from the camera to the shading point.

Value

Input a scalar value.

Value

Value output.

RGB

Input an RGB color.

Color

RGB color output.

Attribute

Retrieve attribute attached to the object or mesh. Currently UV maps and vertex color layers can be retrieved this way by their names, with layers and attributes planned to be added. Also internal attributes like P (position), N (normal), Ng (geometric normal) may be accessed this way, although there are more convenient nodes for this.

Name

Name of the attribute.

Color output

RGB color interpolated from the attribute.

Vector output

XYZ vector interpolated from the attribute.

Fac output

Scalar value interpolated from the attribute.

Geometry

Geometric information about the current shading point. All vector coordinates are in World Space. For volume shaders, only the position and incoming vector are available.

Position

Position of the shading point.

Normal

Shading normal at the surface (includes smooth normals and bump mapping).

Tangent

Tangent at the surface.

True Normal

Geometry or flat normal of the surface.

Incoming

Vector pointing towards the point the shading point is being viewed from.

Parametric

Parametric coordinates of the shading point on the surface.

Backfacing

1.0 if the face is being viewed from the backside, 0.0 for the frontside.

Light Path

Node to find out for which kind of incoming ray the shader is being executed; particularly useful for non-physically based tricks. More information about the meaning of each type is in the Light Paths documentation.

Is Camera Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a camera ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Shadow Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a shadow ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Diffuse Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a diffuse ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Glossy Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a glossy ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Singular Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a singular ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Reflection Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a reflection ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Is Transmission Ray output

1.0 if shading is executed for a transmission ray, 0.0 otherwise.

Ray Length output

Distance traveled by the light ray from the last bounce or camera.

Object Info

Information about the object instance. This can be useful to give some variation to a single material assigned to multiple instances, either manually controlled through the object index, based on the object location, or randomized for each instance. For example a Noise texture can give random colors or a Color ramp can give a range of colors to be randomly picked from.

Location

Location of the object in world space.

Object Index

Object pass index, same as in the Object Index pass.transformed.

Material Index

Material pass index, same as in the Material Index pass.

Random

Random number unique to a single object instance.

Fresnel

Dielectric fresnel, computing how much light is refracted through and how much is reflected off a layer. The resulting weight can be used for layering shaders with the Mix Shader node. It is dependent on the angle between the surface normal and the viewing direction.

IOR input

Index of refraction of the material being entered.

Fresnel output

Fresnel weight, indicating the probability with which light will reflect off the layer rather than passing through.

Layer Weight

Output weights typically used for layering shaders with the Mix Shader node.

Blend input

Blend between the first and second shader.

Fresnel output

Dielectric fresnel weight, useful for example for layering diffuse and glossy shaders to create a plastic material. This is like the Fresnel node, except that the input of this node is in the often more-convenient 0.0 to 1.0 range.

Facing output

Weight that blends from the first to the second shader as the surface goes from facing the viewer to viewing it at a grazing angle.

Texture Coordinates

Commonly used texture coordinates, typically used as inputs for the Vector input for texture nodes.

Generated

Automatically generated texture coordinates from the vertex positions of the mesh without deformation, keeping them sticking to the surface under animation. Range from 0.0 to 1.0 over the bounding box of the undeformed mesh.

Normal

Object space normal, for texturing objects with the texture staying fixed on the object as it transforms.

UV

UV texture coordinates from the active render UV layer.

Object

Position coordinate in object space.

Camera

Position coordinate in camera space.

Window

Location of shading point on the screen, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 from the left to right side and bottom to top of the render.

Reflection

Vector in the direction of a sharp reflection; typically used for environment maps.

Particle Info

For objects instanced from a particle system, this node give access to the data of the particle that spawned the instance.

Index

Index number of the particle (from 0 to number of particles).

Age

Age of the particle in frames.

Lifetime

Total lifespan of the particle in frames.

Location

Location of the particle.

Size

Size of the particle.

Velocity

Velocity of the particle.

Angular Velocity

Angular velocity of the particle.

Hair Info

This node gives access to strand information.

Is strand

Returns 1 when the shader is acting on a strand, otherwise 0.

Intersect

The point along the strand where the ray hits the strand (1 at the tip and 0 at the root).

Thickness

The thickness of the strand at the point where the ray hits the strand.

Tangent Normal

Tangent normal of the strand.

Tangent

Generates a tangent direction for the Anisotropic BSDF.

Direction Type

The tangent direction can be derived from a cylindrical projection around the X, Y or Z axis (Radial), or from a manually created UV Map for full control.

Tangent Output

The tangent direction vector.