What's the difference between a vector and an RGB value?

[aaronfross]

Hi,

Arnold provides conversion nodes, including "RGB to Vector". Can someone please explain the difference between an RGB value and a vector value? Aren't they each just three floating point numbers?

Is the difference simply that RGB values are clamped from zero to one? That may be the case in 3ds Max, but it's not the case in other software that Arnold supports. Maya famously, and wonderfully, has no limit on the Value of a color.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Shawn_Kearney1]

I also would like to know this. I know that colors are not clamped, at least not as positive values. You can have a color as, say {3,1,1}. Allowing colors to go beyond normal is pretty common, actually.

Houdini really makes no distinction between the two, and clarisse colors are used as vectors all the time; last I used Clarisse there was no "vector" data type at all.

I am wondering if it's a matter of colors being color managed, while vectors are not?