8

Diffuse Color 1023
Diagonals on the default Cylinder primitive
Diagonals are normally invisible, but in 3ds Max
they appear as dashed lines w hen you use the
Turn or Edit Triangulation tool. Unlike edges,
diagonals cannot b e transformed, or ac ted upon
with tools like Chamfer. This is different from the
hidden edges in editable mesh/Edit Mesh objects,
which are actual edges and can be made visible,
transformed, and manipulated with any editing
tool.
Diffuse Color
Vase has a mapped diffuse color.
The diffuse color is the color that an object reflects
when illuminated by "good lighting," that is, by
direct daylight or artificial light that makes the
object easy to see.
When we describe an object’s color in
conversation, we usual ly mean its diff use color.
The choice of an ambient color depends on the
kind of lighting: for moderate indoor lighting it
canbeadarkershadeofthediffusecolor,butfor
bright indoor lighting and for daylight, it should
be the complement of the primary (key) light
source. The specular color should be either the
same color as the key light source, or a high-value
low-saturation version of the diffuse color.
Dither ing
Square on the right shows dithering.
When converting an image with a palette of a
greaternumberofcolorstoanimagewithapalette
of fewer colors, dithering is a means of simulating
colors not in the more limited pa lette, by mixing
different-colored pixels together.
Dithering is also a method of smoothing the edges
between two color regions by mixing their pixels
so the edges appear to blend together.
If you are rendering for the limited colors of an
8-bit display (256 colors), you have the option of
turning on dithering. Dithering can help prevent a
banding effect in color gradients. Dithering does
increase the size of 8-bit files and can slow the
playback speed of animations. You might want to