Appearances - Geomview Manual
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#### 4.1.10 Appearances

Geometric objects can have associated "appearance" information, specifying shading, lighting, color, wire-frame vs. shaded-surface display, and so on. Appearances are inherited through object hierarchies, e.g. attaching an appearance to a `LIST` means that the appearance is applied to all the `LIST`'s members.

Some appearance-related properties are relegated to "material", "lighting" and "texture" substructures. Take care to note which properties belong to which structure. Any geometric object can be preceded by an appearance definition like in the following example:

         {
            appearance { +edge }
            LIST { < "file1" } { QUAD 1 0 0  0 0 1  0 1 0  1 0 0 }
         }

Appearances are also OOGL objects in their own right and can be given symbolic names and referenced by them (see References). See Appearance objects.

Texture Mapping
  There is a separate section concerning the definition of textures (see Texture Mapping).
Transparency
  Rendering translucent objects is not supported by all drawing back ends. The OpenGL renderer has limited support for it: top-level objects (i.e. those which appear in the object browser of the main panel (see The Main Panel) are rendered correctly by means of alpha-blending). Also, the RenderMan snapshots will include opacity values.

Here's an example appearance structure including values for all attributes. Order of attributes is unimportant. As usual, white space is irrelevant. Boolean attributes may be preceded by "+" or "-" to turn them on or off; "+" is assumed if only the attribute name appears. Other attributes expect values.

A "*" prefix on any attribute, e.g. "*+edge" or "*linewidth 2" or "material { *diffuse 1 1 .25 }", selects "override" status for that attribute.

         appearance {
           +face               # (Do) draw faces of polygons.  On by default.
           -edge               # (Don't) draw edges of polygons
           +vect               # (Do) draw VECTs.  On by default.
           transparent screendoor
                               # (Enable) transparency. Enabling transparency
                               # does not (necessarily) result in a correct Geomview
                               # pictures, but alpha values are used in RenderMan
                               # snapshots.
                               # The allowed keywords are ``screendoor'' (masking out
                               # out pixels by means of a stipple pattern),
                               # ``blending'' for alpha-blending with BSP-tree
                               # space paritioning and depth-sorting (slow) and
                               # ``naive'' for alpha-blending without even
                               # depth-sorting, not to talk about space
                               # partioning. Omitting the keyword will default to
                               # alpha-blending with BSP-tree space-partioning
                               # and depth-sorting.
           -normal             # (Do) draw surface-normal vectors
           normscale 1         # ... with length 1.0 in object coordinates

           +evert              # do evert polygon normals where needed so as
                               #   to always face the camera

           +texturing          # (Enable) texture mapping
           +linear             # (Enable) linear average of closest texture elements
           +mipmap             # (Enable) texture mip-mapping
           +mipinterp          # (Enable) linear mip-mapping
           -backcull           # (Don't) discard clockwise-oriented faces
           -concave            # (Don't) expect and handle concave polygons
           -shadelines         # (Don't) shade lines as if they were lighted cylinders
                               # These four are only effective where the graphics system
                               # supports them, namely on GL and Open GL.

           -keepcolor          # Normally, when N-D positional coloring is enabled as
                               # with geomview's (ND-color ...) command, all
                               # objects' colors are affected.  But, objects with the
                               # "+keepcolor" attribute are immune to N-D coloring.

           shading smooth      # or ``shading constant'' or ``shading flat'' or
                               # or ``shading csmooth'' or ``shading vcflat''.
                               # smooth = Gouraud shading, flat = faceted,
                               # csmooth = smoothly interpolated but unlighted,
                               # vcflat = flat shading, but smoothly interpolated colors.

           linewidth 1         # lines, points, and edges are 1 pixel wide.

           patchdice 10 10     # subdivide Bezier patches this finely in u and v

           material {         # Here's a material definition;
                               # it could also be read from a file as in
                               #  ``material < file.mat''

               ka  1.0         # ambient reflection coefficient.
               ambient .3 .5 .3 # ambient color (red, green, blue components)
                               # The ambient contribution to the shading is
                               # the product of ka, the ambient color,
                               # and the color of the ambient light.

               kd  0.8         # diffuse-reflection coefficient.
               diffuse .9 1 .4 # diffuse color.
                                 # (In ``shading constant'' mode, the surface
                                 # is colored with the diffuse color.)

               ks 1.0          # specular reflection coefficient.
               specular 1 1 1  # specular (highlight) color.
               shininess  25   # specular exponent; larger values give
                               # sharper highlights.

               backdiffuse .7 .5 0 # back-face color for two-sided surfaces
                                 # If defined, this field determines the diffuse
                                 # color for the back side of a surface.
                                 # It's implemented by the software shader, and
                                 # by hardware shading on GL systems which support
                                 # two-sided lighting, and under Open GL.

               alpha   1.0     # opacity; 0 = transparent (invisible), 1 = opaque.
                               # Ignored when transparency is disabled.

               edgecolor   1 1 0  # line & edge color

               normalcolor 0 0 0  # color for surface-normal vectors
           }

           lighting {         # Lighting model

               ambient  .3 .3 .3  # ambient light

               replacelights   # ``Use only the following lights to
                               # illuminate the objects under this
                               # appearance.''
                               # Without "replacelights", any lights listed
                               # are added to those already in the scene.

                               # Now a collection of sample lights:
               light {
                   color  1 .7 .6      # light color
                   position  1 0 .5 0  # light position [distant light]
                                       # given in homogeneous coordinates.
                                       # With fourth component = 0,
                                       # this means a light coming from
                                       # direction (1,0,.5).
               }

               light {                        # Another light.
                   color 1 1 1
                   position  0 0 .5 1  # light at finite position ...
                   location camera     # specified in camera coordinates.
                                       # (Since the camera looks toward -Z,
                                       # this example places the light
                                       # .5 unit behind the eye.)
                   # Possible "location" keywords:
                   #  global    light position is in world (well, universe) coordinates
                   #             This is the default if no location specified.
                   #  camera   position is in the camera's coordinate system
                   #  local    position is in the coordinate system where
                   #                   the appearance was defined
               }
           }                   # end lighting model
           texture {
                 clamp st               # or ``s'' or ``t'' or ``none''
                 file lump.tiff         # file supplying texture-map image
                 alphafile mask.pgm.Z   # file supplying transparency-mask image
                 apply blend            # or ``modulate'' or ``decal''
                 transform  1 0 0 0     # surface (s,t,0,1) * tfm -> texture coords
                            0 1 0 0
                            0 0 1 0
                           .5 0 0 1

                 background 1 0 0 1     # relevant for ``apply blend''
           }
         }                     # end appearance

There are rules for inheritance of appearance attributes when several are imposed at different levels in the hierarchy.

For example, Geomview installs a backstop appearance which provides default values for most parameters; its control panels install other appearances which supply new values for a few attributes; user-supplied geometry may also contain appearances.

The general rule is that the child's appearance (the one closest to the geometric primitives) wins. Further, appearance controls with "override" status (e.g. `*+face or material { *diffuse 1 1 0 }`) win over those without it.

Geomview's appearance controls use the "override" feature so as to be effective even if user-supplied objects contain their own appearance settings. However, if a user-supplied object contains an appearance field with override status set, that property will be immune to Geomview's controls.