The Surface tab is available at all times, and is divided into a number of sections.
Blend Type Section
- Blend Type box
-
Select whether to use Flame or Photoshop blend modes.
Blend Mode Section
- Blend Mode box
-
- Transparency field
-
By adjusting the transparency of the surface, you can make it fade in or out of view, or simulate a transparent material,
such as glass. When the Trans field is set to 100, the surface is completely transparent. When the value is set to 0, there
is no transparency in the surface.
Surface Section
- Shape box
-
- Surface Resolution field
-
Displays the geometry resolution of the selected surface. By default, the value is equal to the default
Action Resolution setting (in the Rendering section of the Setup menu).
The lower the value, the better the resolution and the greater the processing time required to interact with the image. For
example, a value of 1 on an NTSC image creates a mesh with 720 horizontal and 486 vertical subdivisions on the selected surface,
affording accurate displacement, normals, and lighting.
- Auto Expand button
-
Enable to automatically resize the surface when an attached diffuse map’s Axis settings are changed. Only available for Flat
surfaces, and when a diffuse map is parented from the surface. For a stereo object, since diffuse maps are built into the
object, the Auto Expand button is always available.
- Flip Normals button
-
Flips the selected surface normals. This button is used to light the back side of a surface, and has no incidence on the media
or the orientation of the image that is displayed by the surface.
- Surface Offset fields
-
Shadow Casting Section
- Shadow Casting box
-
Material Section
- Shine field
-
Displays the level of shine in the specular highlights. There are no specular highlights when Shine is set to 0.
- Lighting box
-
- Specular Highlight colour pot
-
Select the colour of the surface highlights.
The specular highlight is visible only if Shading is enabled in the Setup menu and if shine is greater than 0. See Adjusting Specular Highlights.
- Diffuse colour pot
-
Displays the diffuse colour.
- Ambient colour pot
-
Displays the ambient colour. Available when Ambient is selected in the Lighting box.
Rendering Section
- Filter box
-
Select the type of filtering to apply to the surface.
Select: |
To apply: |
Nearest |
No filtering — the pixel of the texture closest to the screen pixel is displayed. |
Linear |
Basic bilinear filtering. |
Anisotropic |
Non-proportional filtering between X and Y (faster to process than EWA, but with a lesser quality). |
Aniso+Linear |
A combination of Anisotropic and Linear filtering. |
EWA |
A high-quality elliptical weighted average filter to produce enhanced rendering results (slower to process than other filters).
|
EWA+Linear |
A combination of EWA and Linear filtering (offers the most advanced filter processing). |
- Wireframe button
-
Enable to convert the selected surface to a wireframe representation. Lighting and transparency properties are kept.
- Motion Blur button
-
Enable to use motion blur for the selected surface. This option can only be used if the global Motion Blur is enabled in the
Setup menu.