Let there be light!

Now that I have a little playground with some basic physics, controls and the like, we can worry a little more about the downright dreadful appearance of the place. Everything looks flat, because I'm slapping solid colors with no shading at all.

What a solid red sphere would look like in the program

Shading helps give a sense of depth, and even the most basic techniques would result in a much improved look and feel. Naturally then, we need to start thinking about lighting. What I'll be implementing for the following stretch is something called the ADS lighting model, which stands for Ambient, Diffuse and Specular.

According to this model, the color that we see an object have is the result of adding three contributions from the light that's lighting it up. These are the ambient light, the diffuse light and the specular light.

Ambient light is the result of light that has bounced several times between objects, with the result that there is no identifiable source. It results in a general brightening of an object, essentially a flat color boost to everything. If we only had ambient light, we'd get a picture much like what I already have.

Ambient light illuminating a red sphere

 Diffuse light is what produces the natural shading we are used to. This light comes from a source, and the angle between the source and the surface normal determines how brightly lit it is. A surface placed perpendicular to a light source will be illuminated more brightly than one placed at an angle, and as a result will have a brighter color. Surfaces parallel or looking away from the light source, on the other hand, are not illuminated at all.

Diffuse light. Paint doesn't have a gradient tool. Use your imagination.

Finally, specular light describes how shiny a surface is, creating the highlights caused by the light source. While Ambient and Difuse lighting depend solely on the position of the light source, Specular light also depends on the position of the observer.

Specular lighting is highly focused. As the observer moves, the apparent position of the highlight can also move.

Adding all these together would give the result we want. In order to add it I don't really have to mess much with the program code, which is fortunate. The heavy lifting is going to be done in the shader program. The actual program is just going to have to provide the necessary information.

Next week I should have a first implementation of it running.