How to drive the normal node with an empty?

Question

Hi, I´ve followed this: How to correctly drive a normal node with lamp rotation?

I´ve tried the same setup but I need an empty to drive the direction of the mapping node onto the normal shading. I think the problem is on the curve drive. What I need is to translate the empty on world space and the mapping node will update the normal node as if it was the "light" direction. Please help.

Also is this question related to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47175/i-want-to-mix-cycles-shaders-based-on-self-shadow — 3pointedit, Apr 02 '18 at 08:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:57

1

I propose a similar setting, but where the normal is driven by a vector defined by the difference between the empty location and the rendered point location (that could be whole sphere location instead).

Here is opposite views when the empty is moving:

Here is the material setup:

The driver is set on the location vector of a mapping (with no input)
From that there is the calculation of the difference between the driven values and the rendered location
The output is normalized and plugged as normal vector

Each driven axis is defined this way, respectively for X, Y and Z:

edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:57

Community

1

answered Apr 02 '18 at 07:01

lemon

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This setup will not work for other objects surrounding the empty. Their light directions are all dislocated. – Pierre Schiller Nov 07 '18 at 22:25

How to drive the normal node with an empty?

1 Answers1