Output Node

 

Table Of Contents

• Introduction
• Inputs
• Surface
• Displacement
• Volume
• Environment
• Light
• Material ID
• Contour

 

Introduction

When you create a new Redshift material, an Output node is already present. The Material Output represents the actual material within the shader node environment and collects the definitions for the material via its inputs. In many cases, it is sufficient to connect the Surface input, because all color, luminance, reflectance, transparency and bump/normal mapping properties are already exchanged via this input. Therefore, for many materials, the connection of a Redshift Material node is sufficient.

In addition to the Surface properties, other material definitions can be made using the other inputs on this node, e.g. for Displacement. For some special materials it is necessary to use the inputs for Volume or Environment instead of the Surface input.

Inputs

Surface

This port expects a container of colors and definitions for diffuse, reflectivity, transparency, luminance and bump/normal mapping. This is the most common port for Redshift materials like the Standard Material or Toon Material.

Displacement

This port expects displacement information as output by the Displacement node. This attribute can be combined with the Surface definition to add deformations to the mapped geometry. By using the Redshift Object Tag for the mapped object, you can add additional subdivisions to the geometry at render time to achieve a more defined displacement, even for low-resolution objects.

Volume

This input expects volume information as output by a Volume shader. This combination is needed to render volumetric smoke, clouds, fire or explosions loaded with the Redshift Volume object.

Environment

This input expects color information, for example, from an Environment node, but even a simple color will work here as well. This input can be used together with Surface or Displacement to include a virtual environment to the material, that is used for reflection simulation. Another use case would be to use the Environment input at the Output node to create an environment definition, that can be used as Environment within the Redshift Camera Tag or as global environment in the Redshift Render Settings (Globals/Options/Default Environment).