Autodesk Mudbox 2013 SDK Documentation > Rendering >

# Shading

Shading is performed by a plug-in which derives from the class Material. The shader is responsible for setting up the OpenGL pipeline for surface shading. Mudbox currently uses two material plug-ins. The first plug-in is a general solution which can load any CgFX material file using nVidia's Cg toolkit. Mudbox has its own CgFX file as a reference supporting the following effects:

- Diffuse and specular per-pixel lighting with one light.
- Normal mapping
- Relief mapping
- Reflections

The default material plug-in does not contain any extra code to support these effects, they are all described in the CgFX file. Users can utilize their own CgFX material files or they can easily modify the default provided CgFX file.

Mudbox also supports advanced materials which require additional code support. These materials provide techniques such as soft shadows, ambient occlusion, etc.