API Guide > Writing a Software Shading Node >

# Overview of shading node plug-ins

This chapter details how to create software shading nodes, which are used by Maya's Software renderer. For shaders used in rendering Maya's interactive scene view, see the chapter on Writing a Hardware Shading Node.

A software shading node is a regular Maya dependency node which provides specially named attributes which are used to connect to other nodes in a shading network and to communicate with the Maya Software Renderer.

Software shading nodes are in general not compatible with third-party renderers such as mental ray or RenderMan. These renderers may pick up, from the shading nodes, specific output values which are constant throughout a frame, but for values which change on a per-object, per-vertex or per-sample basis, they require shaders written in their own APIs.