Raycast Node

The Raycast node traces a ray in the Scene and reports information from the first surface it hits (if any).

This is an expensive node and can significantly slow down renders. You can bake the results to improve render times.

Cycles Only The Raycast node interprets all scene geometry as opaque. It doesn’t take transparency into account to discard hits.

EEVEE Only The Raycast node has the usual Screen-Space Effects limitations.

Inputs

Position

The starting position of the ray. When not connected, the surface position is used.

Direction

The direction the ray goes towards. When not connected, the surface normal is used.

Length

The maximum distance the ray can travel before being considered «no hit».

Properties

Only Local

Only report hits against the object itself, not other objects.

Outputs

Is Hit

One if a hit was detected, zero otherwise.

Self Hit

One if the detected hit was against the object itself, zero otherwise.

Hit Distance

The distance the ray has traveled before the hit. If no hit is found, the ray Length is returned.

Hit Position

The hit location. If no hit is found, a zero vector is returned.

Hit Normal

The geometry Normal of the hit surface. If no hit is found, a zero vector is returned.

Attributes

Cycles Only

Geometry attributes at the intersection point can be accessed. Add attributes in the Sample Attributes panel in the node editor sidebar, and new attribute sockets appear on the node. Fill in the attribute name and link the new output socket to use the value. When no intersection is found, the attribute output is zero.

EEVEE does not support attribute access, and outputs attributes as zero.