Friday, September 3. 2010

Defining Ridgelines with Attenuation

We often use 3d visualization to highlight specific landforms like ridgelines. When you view along the ridge axis, you can use lighting that's roughly perpendicular to the ridge axis to highlight. In this way, one side of the ridge is illuminated while the other is shaded.

It's more difficult to bring out a ridge when you're viewing a face straight on (perpendicular to the ridge axis). The whole face is usually either illuminated or shaded and it's hard to distinguish it from background landscape elements.

In the image above, I'd like to highlight the ridge in the center. Right now it blends in with the background terrain and is difficult to see.

Here's where attenuation comes in. I'll model clear air in front of the ridge and haze behind. Here's the result:

Now it really pops!

Posted by

Ed Russell

at 11:06 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (2)

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Emphasizing Points
In previous posts we've discussed emphasizing ridgelines, linework, and

Weblog: CTM image gallery
Tracked: Feb 18, 12:36

More Ridgeline Stuff
In this post, I discussed using attenuation to help highlight ridgelines, particularly those that run nearly parallel to the viewer. While this is generally an effective technique, there are occasions where you get some undesirable results. Take, for

Weblog: CTM image gallery
Tracked: Sep 02, 11:43

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Great result Ed! This does a good job of primary or focus ridge definition.

#1 Jim Robb on 2010-09-03 15:58 (Reply)

Thanks Jim!

I hope all's well with your Sugarloaf home - this fire's terrible.

#1.1 Ed Russell on 2010-09-07 07:34 (Reply)

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