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Blinn shaders (also known as Torrance-Sparrow shaders) produce metallic-looking surfaces. Use them to create materials like brass or aluminum.

Aside from the attributes described here, the Blinn shader inherits many attributes from its parents Reflect and Lambert. Other kinds of shaders you can use:
For unpolished surfaces, like chalk or matte paint, use a Lambert shader. For glass and glossy plastic surfaces, or car and bathroom mouldings, use a PhongE shader. For microgrooved surfaces like CDs, brushed metal, or hair, use an Anisotropic shader.
In the table below, important attribute have their names indicated in bold in the description column.

This node is MP safe

Node name Parents Classification MFn type Compatible function sets
blinn reflect shader/surface kBlinn kBase
kNamedObject
kDependencyNode
kLambert
kReflect
kBlinn

Related nodes

lambert, reflect, phongE, phong, anisotropic, volumeShader, simpleVolumeShader, surfaceShader, displacementShader, layeredShader, useBackground, defaultShaderList, shadingMap

Attributes (11)

eccentricity, miReflectionBlur, miReflectionRays, miReflectivity, miShinyness, miSpecularColor, miSpecularColorB, miSpecularColorG, miSpecularColorR, reflectionRolloff, specularRollOff

Long name (short name) Type Default Flags
eccentricity (ec) float 0.3 outputinputconnectablestorablekeyable
Eccentricity controls how big your specular highlights (also called 'hot spots') will be. The range is 0 to 0.9999, with larger values making larger highlights. Smaller values make objects appear more finely polished.
specularRollOff (sro) float 0.7 outputinputconnectablestorablekeyable
Specular Rolloff controls the ability of a surface to reflect its surroundings (the environment, other objects, or the Reflection Map, if any), when viewed at oblique angles. This value ranges from 0 to 1, with a default of 0.7. Specular Rolloff does not affect the reflections produced when you render using Ray Tracing. Tip: to get a "wet" look (such as wet paint), use a value of around 0.7.
reflectionRolloff (rro) bool true outputinputconnectablestorablehidden
By default, Blinn Specular Rolloff effects both specular highlights resulting from illumination, and specular reflections of reflection maps. You may wish to have this rolloff apply only to illumination if you are using a ClearCoat node or a home-made shading network to create a roll-off effect by attenuating a reflection map directly. To do this, change reflectionRolloff to false, which will cause the Blinn rolloff to apply only to illumination.
miReflectionBlur (mircb) float 0 outputinputconnectablestorable
Enable reflection blur by shooting more reflection rays. Blurry reflections require supersampling because a rays direction is not exactly determined anymore. It may deviate (randomly) from the perfect specular direction, within the bounds specified by miReflectionBlur (in angle). A value of zero implies a perfectly specular interaction, a value of 90 a perfectly diffuse reflection or refraction. Values of 10 to 30 are a good starting point
miReflectionRays (mircr) short 1 outputinputconnectablestorable
Number of reflection rays to use for blurring. miReflectionRays specifies number of rays to use to sample the random deviation. In general more rays are required for more blurry reflections or refractions. Other sampling parameters also affect this setting: per-object samples and the Render Settings sample setting supersample in image space. If you increase any of these two settings, you may be able to reduce the number of rays without loss of quality, but significant performance gain.
miShinyness (mis) float 10 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader shinyness parameter to control glossy reflection and refraction.
miSpecularColor (misc) float3 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader specular color parameter.
miSpecularColorR (miscr) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader specular red color parameter.
miSpecularColorG (miscg) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader specular green color parameter.
miSpecularColorB (miscb) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader specular blue color parameter.
miReflectivity (mirf) float 0.5 outputinputconnectablestorable
Photon shader reflectivity parameter.