Director 3D > Surfaces, Shaders and Textures

The number of shaders that a model is the same as the number of meshes in the model. Each mesh therefore only supports ONE shader. The best example of this is a box (if you cannot see a "water" type texture on the box below, right click over it and select "Restart" - this is a problem caused if the movie starts while the texture is still loading - more advanced "loading" Lingo scripts can deal with this):

By default a box/cube has 6 meshes – one for each side. Each of these meshes has a shader, which means that each side of the box can be treated as a different material (e.g. a side made from metal, a side made from wood, a side made from glass, etc).

First you need to either create a new texture object or make a reference to an existing texture object.

The Lingo syntax for creating a new texture object is as follows:

newTxtr = member("<which3dMember").newTexture("nameOfTexture", #fromcastmember, member("whichBitmap"))

Here is the custom handler routine we use in the example above - called "Texturize":

-- the custom handler is called like this: -- texturize("Shockwave3dCastmemberName", "ModelName", "CastmembernamefornewTexture", "NewShaderName", rgb(R,G,B), rgb(R,G,B), rgb(R,G,B)) -- ambient diffuse specular -- castmembername & modelname & castmembernamefornewtexture can be provided as numbers if you prefer -- NOTE: texturize will texturize all available shaders of an object. (all six sides of a box) on texturize scene, obj, ntext, nshade, sAmb, sDiff, sSpec -- start with some type casting, to make sure that the arguments passed are valid --check scene argument -- name of shockwave 3d castmember to work on -- exit script if the argument scene does not refer to a sw3d castmember if member(scene).type <> #shockwave3d then return false -- if scene argument is indeed a valid sw3d, -- then modify the variable so that it will reduce typing later scene = member(scene) --check obj argument -- name of model to texturize -- this line checks to see if there is indeed a model -- named obj in the scene, if not it jumps out of the handler if ilk(scene.model(obj), #model) <> true then return false --check ntext argument -- name of bitmap castmember to turn into texture -- this line checks to make sure that ntext refers to -- a bitmap cast member, if not it jumps out of the handler temptype = member(ntext).type if temptype <> #bitmap then return false -- check nshade argument -- if a shader named nshade already exists in the world, jump out of the handler if ilk(scene.shader(nshade), #shader) then return false -- check sAmb, sDiff & sSpec arguments to make sure that they are all rgb(r,g,b) colors -- if any one of these is not a color, then jump out of the handler. if ilk(sAmb, #color) <> true then return false if ilk(sDiff, #color) <> true then return false if ilk(sSpec, #color) <> true then return false -----if we have made it this far in the handler, then we are ready -----to create the shader, set up its default values -----to create the texture, apply it to the shader -----to apply the shader to the object --create a shader named nshade in castmember scene theNewshader = scene.newshader(nshade, #standard) --set the ambient, diffuse, and specular colors theNewshader.ambient = sAmb theNewshader.diffuse = sDiff theNewshader.specular = sSpec -- one last check to see if ntext is already a texture in the world -- if it already exists as a texture, just keep going, -- if it does not exist as a texture, create it as a texture. if ilk(scene.texture(ntext), #texture) = false then theNewtexture = scene.newtexture(ntext, #fromcastmember, member(ntext)) end if -- apply the new texture to the new shader's first texture layer theNewshader.texture = theNewtexture -- apply the new shader to all of the available shaders of the model obj scene.model(obj).shaderlist = thenewshader end

This "texturize" custom handler provides a concise method of creating a new texture, shader and applies these to a given model in a given scene.

To set up a shader called "water", we call a texture image from the (image) castmember - water, and apply it to the cube:

texturize("test", "cube", "water", "watershader", rgb(50,25,4), rgb(150,50,10), rgb(255,255,255))