# Is there an alternative to the Geometry -> Normal Output?

This is the matte I need, created from the mesh with this ring displacement using the "normal" output. I will be using a different displacement in the end but I need this specific information. I am making a fully procedural material and want to avoid baking this texture. I could just manually make circles where they are here but I'd rather use this idea so I don't have to manually change them later if I need too. Is there some way of locking this texture to stay how it is now or is there an alternative node with a similar effect? I just want a matte that's white where the outside and inside wall of this displaced ring would be.

• First time using blender stack exchange, sorry for the symbol brap at the beginning and whatnot – BiggityBoys Jun 20 '20 at 7:58
• I want a texture on top of the ring but since the rings sides aren't completely vertical (an intentional design) If I use the texture that the ring is using then the texture i want on top will show up on the sides, so i want this matte so i can subtract it from the top texture so it does not show up on the sides. When i use this matte from the Geometry node, it works, but then when i put it into the displacement the whole mesh updates and the matte changes (as expected). – BiggityBoys Jun 20 '20 at 8:04
• Have you tried the normal output of the "texture coordinate" node ? – Gorgious Jun 20 '20 at 8:12
• Same Story, I've settled with just doing it by hand which isn't too bad. Does the job well – BiggityBoys Jun 20 '20 at 8:16

Taking the dot-product of the Normal output of the Texture Coordinate node with (0,0,1) will return the Z component of the surface normals, in Object space.