Technical Slop

Advanced: Theory II

Woohoo! This is where the real fun begins! No more of this dinking around with silly contours and z-depth. Time to get serious.

For a start, let's look at some reflections on simple objects. So I fired up my 3d program and whipped out two little examples using Biker Chic. Can you believe it?

One is a basic hemisphere, and the other is a hemisphere with a little bit of squish. Can you see how the reflections correspond to the 3d shape? I hope so. I also hope you are able to do such things with Displace already.

Take note that the reflections aren't perfect. Sure, I used a 3d program, but it was not with out problems. Notice in both examples that Biker Chic's purple outfit got pinched into nothingness at the bottom. That's my fault for using an ugly hack in the 3d prog. Other than the pinching at the extreme outsides, the rest is good and serves us well.

Let's take a peek at another example.

Here is the next map I used in my 3d program. Should be fairly easy to see how things correspond when I toss it on a 3d object.

This is what it looks like on a torus or donut. Can you see it?

Again, not a perfect refection. The very top of the torus should be all red. Notice that yellow and purple got pinched together. It happens at the north, south, east, and west. Has to do with the fact that squares have corners and spheres don't.

Let's draw some arrows to see what's going on.

Right now, we are only concerned with the direction of the grabbitude. We'll worry about distance a little later.

The arrows show that grabbitude comes from up. Both on the outside curve and the inside curve.

Pretty much the same thing for the green. That is, the inside curve and the outside curve grab from the same direction.

As a matter of fact, pretty much the same for the whole thing all the way around in a radial manner.

So, how to go about making a D-Map with that kind of grabbitude? Well, with some creative visualization of the slopes, and what that slope will reflect. Something tells me it's time for a big graphic.

Here we have the squished hemisphere from way up top. Let's look at a horizontal slice. Not only a horizontal slice of the squished hemisphere, but of a horizontal slice of an invert of the Zoom Cube. That slice of the Zoom Cube is illustrated.

Right. So you have to imagine the slope, see what it will reflect, and that's the colour it will be in the D-Map. Notice that each gradient is centered at the gray point. That is the starting point for the reflection. Then the colour that it reflects with have the proper grabbitude. Pfft! I'm at a lose for words. Stare it for awhile. Hang on a sec... here is another example to stare at for awhile.

Okay, so that's just the direction of the reflection. Earlier, I mentioned that I would talk a bit about distance. Well, that time has come.

Let's focus in on those two little bits. I guess you could say that they are on two separate western shores. Make note that both of those spots are exactly the same colour. That is where our problem with distance lies.

What we want is both of those coloured spots to grab from the highlighted area on Biker Chic. However, both of those coloured spots will grab from the same distance - not the same spot! Ugh!

The coloured spot on the left should be more of a 50% gray, and the coloured spot on the right should be more of a pure colour.

Or, going with the western shore idea, the western shores that are more west, should be more subdued. You can say the same thing about the other shores. The farther north a northern shore is, the more subdued it's got to be.

Now that's a pickle.

Fear not, there is a fix. It comes in the form of several very specific Curves Ad-Layers.

We've got direction and we've got distance. Okay, we don't have distance just yet, but we are aware of the problem. Let's build a better donut D-Map, put some of these ideas to the test, and take care of the distance problem.