Shading problem

ridix · 16 Jun 2008, 01:38

I was playing around with this texture I made today. When I shaded it with SU, white line shows at given angle. What’s going on here?

remus · 16 Jun 2008, 06:04

My guess is its the corner of the geometry showing through the texture, im guessing this is happening because youve got edges turned off. My advice would be to just try and put up with it.

Alan Fraser · 16 Jun 2008, 06:47

Try painting the inside faces with the same material...or black...or brown.

ridix · 16 Jun 2008, 11:22

Ok, painting on the inside do help.

Ross Macintosh · 24 Jun 2008, 09:43

I thought this a very interesting problem so I tried playing to see if the situation could be improved.

There's some good news but it might not be viable in every case...

I made a similar model to ridix's one. I could see the same problem in mine when I had the edge display turned off. The white phantom edges would appear particularly when the shadows were turned on.

The trick I found that could improve things was to temporarily turn back on edge display and select an offending line. With it selected, look to the 'entity info' panel and note there is an option to "smooth". (If you don't see the 'entity info' panel, right click on the line and choose it from the top of the context menu). To the selected line apply that "smooth" option. Switch edge display back off and you will see the white phantom edge will be gone.

For some models this technique will work very well. For others the "smooth" function might alter the display of some faces so much as to become a curse. (I can anticipate: "Damn that Ross! - Damn him to hell!"). The 'smooth' function works by rendering the faces connected to the edge with a varying tonal value. It can be hard to anticipate the effect it will have. Faces defined with lots of edges can get their display screwed up when the edges are smoothed. In conclusion don't just select all edges (easy in wire-frame display mode) and 'smooth' them all. Do that and your faces will look wonky. (The resulting inflated look is fun but rarely useful). Instead apply it to offending phantom edges and see if the effect looks good.

Play. The best way to have fun. You will learn while you do.

Regards, Ross