PART 6 - CURVES PART
1
Welcome to the first phong
shading tutorial :) If you're wondering what phong
shading is all about then you may well be interested to read
on...
YOU
WHAT?
Phong shading sounds daunting,
but with a little explanation its really quite straight
forward.
You may have noticed in some of
the latest bagman maps that some of the shapes appear
curved. Now, this thing is as you may know, Kingpin
doesn't support curved surfaces. This leaves you
wondering how it is something can look ultra curved without it
actually being curved. A classic when is a 'brick not a
brick?'. Only of course this case it's when is a curve
not a curve. The answer of course is that a curve can
look like a curve, yet not actually be a curve when it is
phong shaded.
I'm sure I'm still making no
sense what so ever, so let me explain this a bit. When
you want to make a curve you have to angle the required faces
or position wedges together to produce a multi sided
shape. Just a curve made of straight lines. The
problem with this is it looks very jagged and ugly. Not
a curve.
What phong shading does is make
sure that the shading on each of the faces is not too
different, so that a curve will appear smoothly
shaded.
Other Tricks Of The
Eye
Of course if you want to have
some really good looking curved surfaces in your map you will
have to do more than just use phong shading. You can
take advantage of the fact that the eye can be 'lead' around a
shape. If you took a big square box, crushed the
corners in a bit so it looked a bit roundish then took it 50
meters down the road and painted a circle on it close to the
edges then stepped back it would look more curved than if it
didn't have the circle painted on it. Yes I know that
was a bad example, sorry :-p
How you can apply this to
Kingpin mapping is most relevant to making arches. If
you make an arch and then use texture with a curve that
follows the contours of your arch in it around your arch then
it will look more curved. This is just a trick of the
eye. Of course if you can make your won textures all the
better.
In the next tutorial I'll
explain how to put all this into practice and the best ways to
physically make the brushes needed for these techniques.
NOTE: Thanks to KungFu
for pointing out an error in the tutorial. Why not visit
his site at http://ww.poisonville.com/
:)
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