Edge

Bump mapping is a powerful tool for suggesting geometric detail when such detail would be impractical as actual geometry. Unfortunately, two situations in particular cause a bump mapped surface to look fake: when the profile edge of the surface looks too smooth, and when shadows falling on the surface look too smooth.

The Edge shader remedies the first of these problems. Edge can roughen or blur an object's profile edge. The EdgeShadow shader remedies the second. It can roughen the edges of shadows falling onto the object.


Parameters

Profile Edges

Edge and EdgeShadow work by making the object transparent at its profile edges. The artist controls how much of the edge should become transparent, how blurry the edge should be, what kind of noise affects the edge, and how the surface color affects the edge.

NOTE: Edge only works on "profile" edges, that is, edges that curve away from the camera. Edge applied to a cube would have no effect. Also note that it does not work on concave objects.

Profile Overall

Amount controls how much of the edge is made transparent, and thereby how rough the edge will appear to be. Larger values cause deeper cuts into the profile, while smaller values cause less of an effect. A value of 0 essentially disables the entire effect.

Blur controls how fuzzy this edge is. A value of 0 gives a sharp edge line, while a value of 1 will cause the entire edge region to be blurred.

Relative to World and Relative to Object controls whether the edge effects are relative to the world coordinate system or the object coordinate system.

Profile Noise Effect

Noise Influence controls whether the irregular edge profile is influenced by noise.

Influence sets the relative influence that the Noise Effect will have on the profile edge, as compared to the Color effect - similar to the way Landscape's influence function works. When specifying Influences, the ratio of the influences is all that is important.

Roughness controls how noisy the edge of the noise is.

Scale controls the size of the largest clumps of noise.

Profile Color Effect

Diffuse Influence controls whether the irregular edge profile is influenced by the diffuse color.

Influence again sets the relative influence of the effect; see above.

Similar to Landscape's Image Effect , the Color Effect uses the object's diffuse color to generate the edge.

Diffuse is the same color used by the illumination shader.

Shadow Edges

To roughen the edges of shadows, EdgeShadow employs the same algorithm and parameters as Edge.