CGTalk - Difference between shader and material.

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Iotrez

07-13-2005, 02:33 AM

Hi all,

I saw a form on the recruitment section of a game company's website, that applicants have to fill in. In one section you have to give definitions for various things related to games. Two of them are Shaders and Materials.

I was wondering what the difference is between these 2 things as I thought they were the same thing. For example, isn't a Lambert in Maya both a material and a shader?

Thanks for any replies.

housewarmer

07-13-2005, 06:45 AM

I think one can make this broad generalization - paraphrased from Mental Ray docs, that materials are objects that define the nature of the interaction of light & and object. While shader is a more general term for some process that affects render output, for instance something like a post process glow.

MSB

07-13-2005, 05:00 PM

shader : do one thing like SSS

meterial : has all surface attrs like bump,colour,specular.

soulburn3d

07-18-2005, 06:22 PM

Depending on the application, these can mean the exact same thing or different things. Like in max, a shader is the illuminatrion model for a material. But in renderman terms, a shader usually does exactly the same thing that you do with a 3dsmax material. In games these may have more specific meaning, but I think the question is kind of misleading.

- Neil

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