Quick "How To" for TrueSpace 4.3 Normals
I came up with this while experimenting how to create an animated Star Trek TOS warp dome.
Okay, take a fresh scene and turn on whatever antialaising you want in your lighting options but make sure
you set quality to "High" and select "Raytrace". The infinite light I added was just for the first render
but if you use this technique in anything, you will want to illuminate something else in your scene because
it will make NO DIFFERENCE to the object we will work on in the end.
For proof, I added a single spot light, brought the inner circle almost all the way in to make it "fuzzy",
turned on "Cast Shadow" and set the fall off to squared or rapid, whatever that round one is. Like this:
If you render now, you will only see the light cast by the infinite light, not your spot since it is inside
the globe. Like so:
For this quick demonstration, I next pulled up materials, selected the basic "METAL" set and chose the
Aluminum texture.
Make the following changes:
Pick a quick salmon color for the material.
Set Diffuse to full (1)
Lower the shine to 0.25 or so.
Bring the "Rough" all the way down.
Set Mirror to about 1/3 or 0.33
Turn off the Transparent.
This is the strange part: Set the Refraction to 1.01. There is no "zero" so this is just a SLIGHT nudge
into use. If you set it to too much, it will warp your lights.
Here is the setup.
Here's what you get if you render now.
Now, with your globe still selected, go to your 3D options and select Flip Normals (the top one).
You will get an immediate change. Render now and the infinite light is gone!
Well, not really. The infinite light is simply not casting anything on the globe that we can see. The only
light we will see on the globe now is anything set on the inside. If you add more lights to the inside of
the globe, make sure you turn on the "Cast Shadow" option or it will light the rest of your scene.
I hope that helps!