Adobe Director Basics

ADOBE DIRECTOR BASICS
3D: Controlling appearance
For example, if the ambientColor for the 3D member is rgb(64, 64, 192) and the shadowStrength for the shader is 2.5,
the shadow color will be rgb(40, 40, 80). Values for red, green and blue will be pinned to 255. If the ambientColor is
rgb(1, 2, 4) and the shadowStrength is 512.0, then the color of the shadow area will be rgb(128, 255, 255). The color of
the bright area depends on three values:
The color of the highest priority non-ambient light (see “Shader types” on page 35 for details)
The diffuse color of the Painter shader
The highlightStrength of the Painter shader
The color is calculated according to the following equation, with individual red, green and blue values pinned at 255:
brightColor = (light.color AND shader.diffuse) *
shader.highlightStrength
Toon
A toon-style shader reacts to the value of five properties:
shadowPercentage
highlightPercentage
shadowStrength
highlightStrength
diffuse
The sum of shadowPercentage and highlightPercentage may be less than 100. Unless both values are equal to 50, the
shader produces 3 bands of color:
A bright area with the color (light.color AND shader.diffuse) * shader.highlightStrength
A middle area with the color a3DMember.ambientColor / 4
A shadow area with the color a3DMember.ambientColor / 4 * shader.shadowStrength
If shadowStrength is at its default value of 1.0, then the last two areas will have the same color. If shadowStrength is
less than 1.0, the third area appears as a darker hue. If you decide to make shadowStrength greater than 1.0, the areas
where the shading is supposed to be the darkest appears brighter than the mid zone, which is probably not desirable.
Gradient
A Painter shader with a style of #gradient reacts to four properties:
shadowStrength
highlightStrength
diffuse
colorSteps
Any faces that are facing away from the highest priority light takes on the shadow color, as described above. All other
faces are assigned to one of the color steps depending on how much directional light falls on the face. The brightest
faces are colored with the highlight color, as described above. The intermediate faces receive a blend of the highlight
and the shadow color, proportional to their exposition to the directional light. The result is a series of bands of color,
with a gradient from the highlight color to the shadow color.
Engraver shaders
To explore the properties of the Engraver shader, download and launch the movie ShaderTypes.dir.
Last updated 8/26/2011
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