9.5.2

644 • CHAPTER 12
PLUGINS • 645
Comic Flat Limited, Comic Round Limited
Comic Flat. Comic Round.
These two modes draw the objects cartoon-style. The Flat mode is the more suitable of the two
for angular objects. Since the Comic modes generate shaded surfaces based on vectorized raster
images, the accuracy is limited to pixels and therefore not as clean as the vector-based modes such as
Wireframe or Solid. Just like a normal 2D picture, when you scale the SWF document there will be a
loss of quality. To improve the quality of Gouraud output, increase the Width and Height values.
Polygons
This setting determines whether all polygons are drawn (All) or only those facing the camera
(Only Frontfaces).
Each polygon has a surface normal and two faces: a front face and a back face. The direction of the
surface normal denes which side is the front face and which is the back face. In general, all objects
should be modeled with the surface normals pointing outwards. In this case, polygons whose surface
normals point towards the camera are also at the front of the objects and those that are pointing
away are at the back.
If you want to see the back faces in Wireframe mode, set Polygons to All. If instead you set Polygons
to Only Frontfaces, only the front faces will be drawn.
For all rendering modes apart from Wireframe, you should generally set Polygons to Only Frontfaces.
This is because in most cases the front faces will cover the back faces and so you won’t see the back
faces anyway. Calculating back faces in these cases is a waste of render time.