3d explore view shading issue

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Does anyone know of a way to adjust the shading in the 3D explore window? My problem is that when looking in a certain direction, the walls and ceiling display as the exact same shade, making it difficult to visualize the depth because I can't see any edges.

Cheers,
Simon

[Anonymous]

Try moving your sun and adjusting ambient levels and sun colour in 3D Projection Settings (More Sun button)

[Dwight]

Add to Stu:

This kind of view likes a vertical sun.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the fast reply Stuart,

I tried your suggestion but I can't seem to get it to work. It clears up the problem in the initial direction I was facing (in the attachment), but when I turn around everything is the same shade of grey.

[Dwight]

So why IS everything the same color?

[Anonymous]

Hi Dwight,

I tried a 90º sun altitude, that makes the scene flicker as I move around, It's almost as if AC picks only 3 different shades for the planes that are facing the sun (on a cube for example). The other 3 sides away from the sun get the same colour of shading.

The reason everything is the same colour is that I'm using whitewash for the walls, columns and ceilings, trying to emulate how our stores are painted.

[Dwight]

It is clear that the OpenGL cannot deliver the subtlety you need to describe an interior space with totally uniform surfaces.

AND
you are really only trying to schematically define the space with OPenGL anyways…

so make the ceiling light brown or something - develop a schematic language for surfaces.

You will also benefit if you make the sunlight yellow and the ambient light blue.

[Anonymous]

Ok - thanks for your input Dwight, this has had me banging my head on the wall for a while now. I can figure out a workaround, I was hoping to avoid that as my model will need some serious tweaking.

I think the AC 3D engine is pretty nice otherwise, I'm getting great framerates on this huge store with tons of complex profiles, fixtures, mannequins and curved surfaces. I've been exporting to VRML to do VR walkthroughs, but that requires alot of fiddling as AC doesn't seem to export textures in the correct scale to VRML.

I hope they improve this in AC12!

Cheers!
Simon