Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
15. The only texture that this material will use is
sf_cabin_reflMap
, with a couple of
modiicaions in the I
influence
panel:
F
Diffuse Color: 0.6
F
Blend: Value
We chose
Value
as the blending type because it will make the effect look like a
grayscale image, which reinforces the idea of the material being a cold metal.
16. To finish the space fighter make sure the object's name is
spaceFighter
and save
the file.
Objective Complete - Mini Debriefing
Shading the space fighter was done by applying two kinds of materials: A very basic rusty
metal and a relecive crystal (for the cabin). We tweaked the difuse and specular opions
according to the needs of each kind of material and then added a finishing touch with the
textures in each case. For the relecion, we used a simple technique that yields very nice
results and with almost zero impact on render ime.
Classified Intel
One of the tricks used in this part was the one used to get faked relecions. Relecions are
a must when creaing a polished material, such as metal or crystal. Since our scene is located
in an empty space, acivaing the calculaion for relecions will be of no use because there
is nothing to relect. In such cases, the relecion mapping trick comes quite handy to get a
relecion efect easily, by just using an image and the appropriate seings for the inluence
values of the texture.
A good quesion that can arise while working on this part is: Why are we using the Blinn
shader for the specular component? The technical deiniion of the word
shader
is related to
a computaion that afects the appearance of an object, so using the word to describe either
the full material or only certain components of it is commonly accepted (for example, diffuse
shader and specular shader, wood shader, and so on). Since shaders are a computaion to
simulate certain real-world efects, they are suscepible of being opimized for certain use
cases. In this case, we need the Blinn shader for the specular part of the material because of
the IOR factor that it includes in the computaion and that allows controlling the size of the
specular area on the surface of the object.
Modeling and shading the planet
This one will be very simple, since we're going to use a sphere for the planet; the important
part of the work here is the texturing, that's why we downloaded a projected map directly
from
www.nasa.gov
to work with it.
