Compositing in 3D Space with Action > About Surfaces > Modifying Surfaces >

# Surface Settings

The Surface tab is available at all times, and is divided into a number of sections.

(a) Blend Mode box(b) Shape box(c) Lighting box

## Blend Type Section

Blend Type box
  Select whether to use Flame or Photoshop blend modes.

## Blend Mode Section

Blend Mode box
  Select how the front and matte clips or the front and back clips are combined. See Surface Blending Modes.

Transparency field
  Displays the transparency of the image. Enter 0 for a completely opaque image, or 100 for a completely transparent image.

## Surface Section

Shape box
  Select a shape for the selected surface. For Stereo Objects, you are limited to using a Flat surface. See Changing the Shape of a Surface.

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. Always available for stereo objects.

Flip Normals button
  Enable to flip the selected surface normals to light the back side of a surface.

Force 2-Sided button
  Enable to have lights in the scene light both sides of the surface (when shading is turned on).

Surface Offset X field
  Defines the level of offset for a surface along the X axis. Editable.

Surface Offset Y field
  Defines the level of offset for a surface along the Y axis. Editable.

See Offsetting a Surface.

## Shadow Casting Section

Shadow Casting box
  Select how the selected image object will be affected by a Shadow Cast object in the scene. See Surface and Geometry Shadow Casters .

## Material Section

Shine field
  Displays the level of shine for the specular highlights (there are no specular highlights when Shine is set to 0). Editable.

Lighting box
  Select Ambient or Diffuse lighting so that the surface can reflect incidental light. See Applying Incidental Light Reflection.

Specular Highlights colour pot
  Displays the colour of the surface highlights. Editable.

  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. If Diffuse is selected in the Lighting box, the Ambient colour takes on the same shade as the selected Diffuse colour. Editable.

Ambient colour pot
  Displays the ambient colour. Available when Ambient is selected in the Lighting box. Editable.

## 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 (can only be used if the global Motion Blur is enabled in the Action Setup menu).