Shading faces depending on orientationಟn acoದು ್ತ
Newbie here with possible strange request.
I am learning anatomy, currently by studying a 3d skull. I would like to lit it in some ways, so that the faces facing front would be in a certain color, the faces facing left in another, the faces facing right in another.. you get the idea. This would come with some threshold i guess: lit faces that are x degrees facing front for example.
I guess that i would have to dig into creating a shader to do so? Maybe with the normals? Maybe what i want is not possible?
Thanks in advance! Y
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$\\begingroup$ There are a couple ways to do this. If you just want to view the 3d skull, you can just turn on a matcap, which will shade objects in the viewport in different ways that make it easier to see the geometry. There are two ways I can think of to render the skull. One is to create a shader. Another is to just set a couple differently colored lights in the scene that shine on the skull from different angles, making it easier to see, or imitating the effect you might get from a shader. $\\endgroup$ – Tavi Kohn 9 hours ago
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$\\begingroup$ You say "lit" so I assume that you mean that the lighting should create those colour differences? Or do you need a material for it? $\\endgroup$ – Jackdaw 9 hours ago
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$\\begingroup$ will the same face change its color if you rotate the object or it will always stay the same color? $\\endgroup$ – moonboots 9 hours ago
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$\\begingroup$ It depends on if you parent the lights to the object or not. If you don't, then each face will change color, but if you parent the lights to the mesh, each face should remain the same color. $\\endgroup$ – Tavi Kohn 9 hours ago
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$\\begingroup$ Thank you all for all your replies! I am overwhelmed to see so much help :). By "lit", i just meant to color. I just need to know "where my faces are facing". I won't be turning the model or anything, but if i was, i guess that the faces's color should change according to what they are facing? The idea for me is to inquire about the planes of the skull, see how things transition. $\\endgroup$ – Gynko 5 hours ago
2 Answers
If you want it to look like lighting, you could just use colored lights?
But to shade the surface, you could use an arrangement something like this ..
.. which is quite tweakable .. It would depend.. how do you want the colors to be combined.. as @moonboots asked, do you want the colors to be stuck to the surface?
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$\\begingroup$ This is really great Robin ! that helps so muchhh! Thank you ! $\\endgroup$ – Gynko 5 hours ago
Here is a similar setup then Robin Betts, but a little bit more complex/ parametric:
1: Mapping-Location changes offset (values from 0 - 1)
2: Mapping-Scale changes blur/sharpness (values from 0 - 100)
This way all the directions are equally separated
After some further experimentation, i found it to be quite tricky to not only mix colors, but to use the resulting colors as sharp masks. Therefore here an alternative version wich uses the resulting mixed-color green as Mask.
In this case only green is masked
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$\\begingroup$ fantastic !! that looks really advanced and well thought! Thank you so much for this !! $\\endgroup$ – Gynko 5 hours ago
