TerraForm

Surface Tab

Attributes

• Smooth Shading - If this is checked, then objects will be lighted to look more rounded. Without smoothing, complex terrain can look blocky. Smoothing makes objects slightly slower.


• Foreshortening - With forshortening, the browser will perform the extra calculations to ensure that the textures render properly. Foreshortening makes objects slower. In general, smaller polygons don't need foreshortening as much as larger polygons. If you are using large, low-res objects then the use of forshortening is highly recomended. The foreshorten command is added to the object even if it has no texture. This means that the object will have foreshortening in place if you decide to add texture manually later. (for example, using the CREATE ANIMATE command)


• Double Sided - Land objects will be rendered as two-sided, meaning that the underside of your hills will be visible. This can give the "inside" of your hills a cave-like look. Note that only the outside of your terrain will have collision. This makes your objects much slower.

Settings

• Ambient - The overall brightness of your terrain, in a range from 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.0 being total darkness and 1.0 being full brightness. Setting this too low will cause the areas of your map in shadow to be completely dark, while setting this too high will make your entire landscape blindingly bright.
  
• Diffuse - How much your terrain is affected by the outside light source, in a range of 0.0 to 1.0. At 0.0, your map will reflect no light and will simply be the brightness from the AMBIENT field. A high value will make your terrain very reflective, with the areas lit directly by the light source becoming very bright.


• Specular - This number, in a range of 0.0 to 1.0, is used to control the ammount of metallic shine on a surface. This is not normally useful on a typical map, and should usually be set to 0.0.


• Opacity - This controls how transparent your terrain is. This option is really only useful for special effects. With a value of 1.0, your terrain is completely opaque. Lower values will make the land more transparent. At 0.0, the land is completely transparent and will be invisible. (note, under MMX, the terrain is still somewhat visible, even with an opacity of 0.0)