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From Odwiki

Shaders in Mantra

mantra performs all shading using programmable shaders which are written in VEX. There are several different shading contexts which can be invoked during the rendering process.

A SurfaceShader defines the colour and opacity of the surface.

A DisplacementShader is used to displace geometry prior to rendering.

A LightShader is used to compute illumination from light sources.

A ShadowShader is used to modulate illumination from light shaders. Typically this computes shadow occlusion.

An AtmosphereShader is used to modulate the resulting colors of a SurfaceShader. Typically this computes atmospheric effects.

A ProceduralShader is called by Mantra to determine what geometry it should render.

A PhotonShader is used to decide the fate of Photons

When generating photon maps, mantra the SurfaceShader context is replaced by a PhotonShader context. The PhotonShader context is used to distribute photons to the photon map.

See Also

• WritingShaders - info on how to write shaders
• SHOPs - shader nodes
• mantra - the renderer