Common surface material Specular Shading attributes

For more information about specular highlights, see Specular highlight (shine).

For material-specific specular shading attributes, see the particular material. For example, for information on the specular shading attributes of the Anisotropic material, see Anisotropic.

Specular Color

The color of shiny highlights on the surface. A black Specular Color produces no surface highlights. The default color value is 0.5.

Tip

For glossy plastic surfaces, use a whitish Specular Color. For metallic surfaces, use a Specular Color similar to the surface color.

Reflectivity

Gives the surface the ability to reflect its surroundings or the Reflected Color (similar to Specular Roll Off). The valid range is 0 to infinity. The slider range is 0 (no reflections) to 1 (clear reflections). The default value is 0.5.

Reflectivity values for common surface materials are car paint (0.4), glass (0.7), mirror (1), chrome (1).

Note

• For the Anisotropic material, you must turn off Anisotropic Reflectivity to change this value.
• Real reflections are only calculated during raytracing.
• If you are doing raytracing and you want other objects in the scene to be seen in reflections, then for those objects you must ensure the Visible In Reflections attribute is turned on in the Render Stats section of the Attribute Editor. (It is on by default.)

Reflected Color

Represents the color of light reflected from the material. When raytracing, Maya multiplies the color with the light color reflected mirror-like from the surface. This can be used to tint a reflection.

If you are not raytracing, you can map an image, texture, or environment map to the Reflected Color attribute to create fake reflections, which is faster and uses less memory than raytracing. This is called reflection mapping. For more information on reflections, see True reflections.