Material
 | Material | This node sets colors for the Ambient, Diffuse, Emissive and Specular channel and the Alpha value and thus directly affects the shading of an object. |
The Material node defines the shading of an object. Note that the resulting shading is a combination of the Material parameters and the Light source parameters. By default, Ventuz uses Gouraud shading which calculates shading for each vertex and interpolates between them. Therefore the tessellation of an object can have an impact on the visual quality of the shading.
Gouraud shading uses three main terms to efficiently fake real world lighting: An ambient term that lights an object independent of any lightsources (simulating global effects like sunlight bouncing of surfaces, indirectly lighting an object). A Diffuse term that is independent of the viewer lights a surface based on its relation to a light source (the back side is darker than the one facing the light source). A Specular term which is dependent on both the light source and the viewing position (creating a sharp highlight that represents the reflection of the lightsource itself in the object surface).
The description of the Alpha properties can be found on the Alpha node page.
The Material category contains the following properties:
- Diffuse color affects the diffuse shading component.
- Ambient color affects the ambient shading component.
- Emissive color is light source independent and simulates a kind of self-illumination.
- Specular color affects the specular shading component.
The property Sharpness defines the size of the specular highlight. A larger value reduces the highlight size. SpecularOn defines if the specular component should be added to the resulting shading at all.
The Option category contains two properties:
Normalize defines if the normal vectors should be recalculated if the object gets scaled. The normalizations lead to a shading independent of the object size. This property can be set to three modes:
 | Inherit: the setting is inherited from a superior Material node. |
| Yes | Normals have to be recalculated. (The default if not overridden) |
| No | Normals are not recalculated. |
ShadeMode specifies if a Flat or Gouraud shading algorithm should be applied to an object. Possible modes are:
| Inherit: the setting is inherited from a superior Material node. |
| Gouraud | Gouraud shading is used. (The default if not overridden) |
| Flat | Flat shading is used. |