Shading objects?

[Neil]

I wasn't sure whether to post this under "how do I" or "tips and techniques" - it's a bit of both.

I'm just wondering how everyone here approaches shading an object. I don't use the basic "shading" effect since it seems to be designed for 2D cutouts, and I like point animation with a lot of turns, so I've been looking for other techniques. Here's what I came up with:



I gave each shape three tones, made the interior outlines invisible and used soft edges on the highlights, with the blur radius set to 40. It's a bit of a pain, though, since I have to use masks to stop the soft edges from bleeding outside the shape, and it's also important to remember what order to colour everything on - in this case, I have to make the whole shape black, then make the two highlighted areas brown, then make the furthest highlight white.

How does everyone else do it? Anyone got any good examples of shading?

[jahnocli]

This is a good technique for having control over shading -- thanks for sharing!

[Nephilim]

Wow, that looks great, I'll be sure to try it out later. I don't have any special techniques myself but it's nice to see other people come up with ways to make their own shading techniques.


Thanks for the info!

[slowtiger]

Very impressive. But I always wonder if it's worth all that additional amount of work ...