Blender Master Class

Shading Modes

Notice that so far in blocking out the projects, I have kept the meshes we have been creating shaded flat—that is, the faces appear faceted and do not blend into one another. The reason for this is that it makes it easier to read at a glance the direction that the faces of a mesh are pointing and to see how the forms of the mesh are progressing. Later on, I will use smooth shading to render some of the models in order to make them look smooth (Figure 4-29), but for now this isn’t necessary. To switch between the two, simply select your mesh, and in the Tool Shelf, use the Flat and Smooth operators to switch the shading of your selection between flat and smooth shading. You can do this either in Object mode, which affects the whole ...