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Serious Question, what is the reason?, wouldn't it look more realistic lol.

I'm not too sure but I think we shade and highlight miniatures to reflect depth and lighting that can't actually be shown on such a small figure. It's meant to make it more realistic and imitate a real-life scenario. However with real-life stuff like houses and cars the sun creates areas of shade and lighter areas so highlights/shades aren't needed.

Yeah that makes sence i guess, but i mean fake light creates plenty of shades n highlights etc, so i was wondering but yeah thanks man for clearing that up.

What he said.

The whole purpose of shading and highlighting is to fool the eye into thinking the miniature is bigger than it actually is. There would be no point doing this on something that's already life-size, unless you're trying to create an exaggerated effect, like painting a six - pack on your stomach with makeup...

Oh yeah that's very good explanation. Thanks man i was just wondering today...why don't they shade large scale stuff or like cars, but yeah i guess they would only do it as you say to exaggerate effects, sort of like that Emperor of man thing we saw yesterday in Italy... but then again since that is bigger then life size, was it really necessary for them to shade it etc like they did...like... i don't know i cant explain it at the moment, but yeah.

Part of shading includes panel lines. Panel lines simulate separation of metal /steel/ ceramite/ armor/ spaces etc.

Real cars don't often have panel lines. And they naturally have weathering when you neglect them.

The Allfather wrote:
Part of shading includes panel lines. Panel lines simulate separation of metal /steel/ ceramite/ armor/ spaces etc.

Real cars don't often have panel lines. And they naturally have weathering when you neglect them.

What about the lines separating like for example, the plastic that some times runs along the side bottom of some cars in between the metal, those are panel lines right?

Edit - Or bumpers

Shading on a miniature is exaggerated in exactly the same way that the proportions of a miniature are exaggerated.

You don't need to add shading to a life size object because it is, well, life sized.

Adding extra shading or highlights will make it it look cartoon-y. If that's what you're aiming for then yeah, go ahead with it!

its purely for size as previously mentioned. why would you need to shade true life items, when the sun and other light sources provide that already? looking at 1/1 scale items, your eyes perceive shadows, where the light falls, shine etc. now when you shrink the item to a scale comparable to warhammer, your eyes cant perceive those same effects because there is not enough depth, so your eyes will not register them. the best example I can give is to look at a toy car.. it doesnt really look real does it? its because the paint job is flat.

As they say they objects in real life automaticaly have realistic shadowing, being real.....(sounded better in my head)

If you look at make up though they do. acrylic nails are primed/layered/varnished like models and contouring is adding shadows and high lights to change the perceived shape of the face.
(I did have a link to a rather butch guy contouring his face and he became a delicately boned girl, so long as he faced the camera directly - looked weird as hell when he turned though)

Illusion dresses are somewhat similar tricking the eye with light/dark patterns to adjust perception but its more like dazzle camoflague.

That gives away i have been watching too much This Morning - the fashon items are actually sinking in Help!

As already explained, the shading and highlighting is to exaggerate the lighting effect.

To draw an analogy, the ultra-realistic aesthetics of the painting of the Baroque periods were actually similar application of light & dark to make the painting APPEAR realistic.

All smokes and mirrors I'm afraid.

If you actually shaded & highlighted objects such as a car, it'd actually look more cartoonie than more real.

This thread tickled me. Thank you thread creator.

The idea of a highlighted car is brilliant. I lost it at the ‘wouldn’t it look more realistic?’ Comment. Brilliant.

Then again...

Yeah well, i could go on with more questions like, the guy who said toy cars don't look right. But then what about the more expensive car models with no shading/highlights that can look exactly the same, maybe the lighting is different but you can put your car in the garage and get the same effect.

I don't know.

I do understand the whole exaggerating thing though.

Decently built car models generally have gloss paints and metallic bodies that mimic the reflectivity and hues of an actual car body. So it doesn't need "shading and highlighting", because it's bouncing light in a way that a real car does. Acrylic paint on a plastic model surface doesn't generally achieve the same effect, and so we add highlights to create a simulacrum of light bouncing off a painted metal surface. Even a tank painted in matte drab will have a lot more gloss reflectivity than acrylics on plastic, and will have a more dramatic contrast between the apparent hue of different faces and edges.

Additionally, a vehicle with even a small amount of time in use outdoors will start to accumulate weathering. Dust gathers on creases and lower edges, upward facing surfaces become are faded faster by the sun.

There's also a big difference in how directional the lighting outdoors is, vs indoors. A vehicle outside will have more strongly directional light from the sun. A model indoors us going to get a lot more diffuse lighting from several angles. This will basically eliminate the sort of natural shading one would see on the real deal.

Just cheat nd take photos of your stuff outside on a sunny day. LOL

It makes even the most mediocre of painters (me!) look good.


Although it I did have to wait like six months for the grass to dry out enough and the ambient air temperature was like 40'C (let alone on the ground where I was lying with my camera lol).

Look at a brand new pained up UN vehicle. It looks horrible. IT IS JUST WHITE. I, as a mediocre painter, I think is the purpose of such painting techniques is to break up the model.
So basically just do what gives you a satisfactory result.

Lol, yeah well its like i say. You put a model outside in the sun with no highlights and shading and it looks realistic like some thing like a real car. But you can also put a real car and a model inside a building and you get the same effect where as there still looking the same as they were outside, with just different lighting. But i guess its like people say, models are smaller so its really for exaggeration purposes or what ever. (