Types of Shading

Comparison of default, flat shading vs. smooth shading.

# sphinx_gallery_thumbnail_number = 2
import pyvista

pyvista.set_plot_theme("document")

PyVista supports two types of shading, flat and smooth shading that uses VTK’s Phong shading algorithm.

This is a plot with the default flat shading:

sphere = pyvista.Sphere()
sphere.plot(color="w")

Out:

[(1.9264490110725325, 1.9264490110725325, 1.9264490110725325),
 (0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
 (0.0, 0.0, 1.0)]

Here’s the same sphere with smooth shading:

sphere.plot(color="w", smooth_shading=True)

Out:

[(1.9264490110725325, 1.9264490110725325, 1.9264490110725325),
 (0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
 (0.0, 0.0, 1.0)]