Solid Volume Shader

Created by ben and hosted with his permission, the following content is from a post on XSIbase.com here.

Hi all, I took a shot at writing a shader. It's a solid volume shader for use with 3D textures. A 3D texture is plugged into the shader and the shader is plugged into the material for a closed volume. A threshold is set and anywhere the texture value is above the threshold, the volume appears solid. Here are some examples applied to cubes:

3D vein texture

3D wave texture

3D wave with HDRI environment (HDRI is copyright 2002,Computer Graphics Reseach Group of the K.U.Leuven, thanks)

DarkTree amoeba texture

New version (rc11) supports transparency

Refraction

Transparent shadows

Also the internal color and density of the volume can be driven by procedurals. If the surface is made completely transparent the shader can be used for non-solid volumetrics.

I'm sure it could use more work. Any comments or suggestions appreciated.

Thanks, Ben

Download the Shader rc19

Download the Volume Loader Node rc6