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When drawing a 3D object in Asymptote, one can define the color with constructions like rgb(.4,.4,1) or rgb(1,0,1)+opacity(.5), which have fairly obvious meanings. One can also wrap these color commands in emissive(..), as in emissive(rgb(1,0,1)+opacity(.3)).

What does the emissive wrapper do? I can see the results, but I don't quite understand what is going on. Are there other wrappers like emissive?

In the manual, the only place where the word emissive appears is in the word emissivepen, on page 132. A secondary question is: what does emissivepen do? In that same section, diffusepen, ambientpen and specularpen are also defined, though I don't understand their use.

GregH
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2 Answers2

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In Asymptote, a pen object includes certain properties (most notably, color) that are used to draw lines and fill areas. A material object (defined in three_light.asy) is used to color surfaces and includes, roughly, three different pens. To understand these, keep in mind that an Asymptote 3d picture comes equipped with "lighting", which includes one or more light sources (specifying direction and strength) and an ambient light (strength only, no direction; it's "from everywhere.").

  • diffusepen: The way the object interacts with light sources. Portions of the surface aimed directly at the light source show up exactly this color; the color gradually fades to black as the surface approaches a 90 degree angle to the light source.
  • specularpen: The extent to which the object behaves like a mirror. This pen only affects portions of the surface aimed directly at the light source (or close to it).
  • emissivepen: Object coloring that is completely independent of the lighting. A surface colored with emissivepen=red and no other pens will show up completely red no matter what direction it is aimed.

If more than one pen is set, then the colors are added together to produce the final result.

There are three reasonably convenient ways to produce a material object (typically for the surfacepen parameter of a draw command):

  • The full constructor:

      material(pen diffusepen=black,
           pen emissivepen=black,
           pen specularpen=mediumgray,
           real opacity=opacity(diffusepen),
           real shininess=defaultshininess,
           real metallic=defaultmetallic,
           real fresnel0=defaultfresnel0)

Note that all the parameters are optional.

  • A pen object can be cast to a material object. If you pass in the pen p, it gets cast to material(diffusepen=p). Thus, the diffusepen will be p, the specularpen will be mediumgray, and the other two pens will not contribute.
  • The emissive wrapper: if p is a pen, then emissive(p) produces a material with emissivepen=p (and opacity taken from opacity(p)), but no other pens contribute. This is convenient if you want, say, a yellow polygon that will not fade to black when the lighting changes.
Charles Staats
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  • Asymptote version 2.62 give me an error on draw(unitsphere,surfacepen=material(white+opacity(0.8),ambientpen=white), meshpen=gray(0.4)); as no matching function 'material(pen, pen ambientpen)' does something changed? – kelalaka Feb 11 '21 at 21:37
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    It appears that the ambientpen was removed in https://github.com/vectorgraphics/asymptote/commit/714371587643f770febae01cd9a81f87818e28e7#diff-e0ded65b95a9ec587a908a505dc752106dce6024aad670738461adbd9015071d, likely because the same effect can be achieved with emissivepen. I will modify the answer accordingly. – Charles Staats Feb 12 '21 at 00:15
  • I'm not really sure that they are the same. I cannot reproduce the same result of this – kelalaka Feb 12 '21 at 00:30
  • Did you try emissivepen=0.1*white? They are not the same, emissive is about ten times stronger than ambient by default, but they can be used to achieve the same effect. – Charles Staats Feb 12 '21 at 13:33
  • I think this difference should be in the answer, too. Since there are lots of examples/questions around here and outside that use the ambientpen but they cannot be compiled, and even some from your tutorial, too. Maybe your tutorial needs an update/note about this too. I've tried but not close to the original ( even the labels are small compared to the original image). I'll contact the author again. – kelalaka Feb 12 '21 at 13:53
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As I understand it, an emissive pen "emits" light. A non-emissive pen just reflects light. A 3D object drawn with an emissive red pen will be shown in pure red. A 3D object drawn with a non-emissive red pen will be shown in shades of red, depending on lighting and camera positions.

James
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