Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D: Controlling appearance
Ambient property
The only active property for ambient light is light.color.
To get the most realistic effect in your 3D world, the ambient light must be the same color as your main directional
light. Ambient lights ignore all other properties that you set for a light object.
Ambient color of #standard shaders
Only #standard shaders react to ambient light. All other shaders ignore it. Standard shaders have an ambient color
property. This determines how the shader reacts to ambient light. If the ambient light is yellow (red + green) and the
shader's ambient color is magenta (red + blue), then all faces with that shader will be tinted red. The green channel of
the ambient light will be ignored, and there will be no blue light for the shader to react to.
If the ambient light is a shade of gray (equal amounts of red, green, and blue), then all faces with the shader will be
tinted magenta. Normally the ambient color of a #standard shader will be a shade of gray. The default value is
rgb("#3F3F3F). For more information on the properties of shaders, see “Shaders and appearance modifiers” on
page 130.
Directional lights
A directional light acts as if its rays travel in parallel from infinity in the direction of the light's negative z-axis (from
positive to negative). A directional light creates an effect of light and shade that enhances the illusion of three
dimensions.
Changing the position of a directional light has no effect. Changing the rotation of a directional light will change the
way it illuminates each triangular face of the models in the 3D world. To get the most realistic effect in your 3D world,
the ambient light needs to be the same hue as your main directional light.
To experiment with directional lights, download the movie Lights.dir and launch it.
Directional lights create an effect of light and shade, due to the angle of incidence of the light on each surface.
Last updated 8/26/2011
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