Colour Shading and Textures

Abstract

Shading and texture effects can add extra realism to the computer generated image of a virtual world — shading is applied to modify the basic colour of a polygon whilst texturing can add a more complicated pattern such as a brick-wall design. The underlying concepts involved are not difficult to grasp but an efficient implementation can introduce a fair degree of complexity — this chapter breaks up the process of designing a shading or texturing algorithm into a sequence of easy steps. The following topics are included:

• interaction of lights and surfaces

• common shading models

• theory and practice of texture mapping

• gloom factors and depth perception

• higher-order difference equations