Ray Direction
The Ray Direction node converts the direction of the incoming ray into an RGB texture (figure 1). It is primarily used for advanced procedural shading, creating custom falloffs, view-dependent effects, and non-photorealistic or technical rendering setups by reading vector data in world, object, camera, or tangent spaces. Figure 1 shows a simple node setup where the Ray Direction node is used as the diffuse color for an Octane material.
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ray direction
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Figure 1: A Ray Direction node is connected to the Diffuse pin on a Glossy material node
Ray Direction Parameters
View Direction - If checked, the resulting vector is determined from the viewing position to the shaded point position, if not checked, the data is calculated in the opposite direction.
Coordinate System - The coordinate space used to output the ray direction.
- World - Coordinates are calculated from the absolute origin of the scene (0,0,0).
- Object - Coordinates are calculated by the orientation of the object on which the node is applied.
- Camera - Coordinates are calculated from the origin of the camera's center.
- Tangent - Coordinates are calculated across the surface of an object where x and y can be thought of as U and V (texture space) and the Z direction is each faces' normal direction.
Normalize Result - Determines whether to rempa the results to the 0 to 1 range or leave it in the -1 to 1 range.