Shading - Flat Shading

Flat Shading

Flat shading is a lighting technique used in 3D computer graphics to shade each polygon of an object based on the angle between the polygon's surface normal and the direction of the light source, their respective colors and the intensity of the light source. It is usually used for high speed rendering where more advanced shading techniques are too computationally expensive. As a result of flat shading all of the polygon's vertices are colored with one color, allowing differentiation between adjacent polygons. Specular highlights are rendered poorly with flat shading: If there happens to be a large specular component at the representative vertex, that brightness is drawn uniformly over the entire face. If a specular highlight doesn’t fall on the representative point, it is missed entirely. Consequently, the specular reflection component is usually not included in flat shading computation.