Using colors to map all kinds of material properties

Since Real 3D doesn't have a builtin method to do specular mapping, someone just had to come up with a method of doing this. I don't remember who it was, but thanks a lot anyway. Unlike Lightwave, Real 3D allows you to not only to change the brightness of the highlights with texturemapping, but also the size of the spots if wished. There is no need to generate a secondary map for this, as it is possible to rescale values with some simple formulae. The idea is to map onto something that can be defined normally, like brilliance, use formulae or rpl scope handler to remap this onto another property, like specular brightness. If you want to use an existing colormap to define specular brightness as well, switch on brilliance map in addition to colormap, and add the following to the scope formula handler: 'sb=br,br=0'. Normally it is advised to do less specular brightness, so add a factor by writing sb=br*0.2, br=0. Below is a couple of examples.

Examples of specular mapping
Fig. 1. Color map only	Fig. 2. Color map, specularity = brilliance*0.5, Specularity brightness = 52	Fig. 3. Color map, specularity brightness = brilliance*0.8, specularity = 16
Fig. 4. Same as fig. 3 but I here use the redefine reflected attributes set to full white	Fig. 5. Normal specularity and specularity brightness applied to the ground. 'Panel' texture applied as shadow and bumpmap.	Fig. 6. Same as fig. 5 but with specular brightness from texture map, and then add in some noise. Don't worry, we'll get to noise.

As you can see from these pictures this method of making an object shine is quite useful and powerful. I will recommend to make separate textures which is going to be used as specularity maps because you can add inn some noise (speckle) to give he impression of a wethered material. Also the rendering will be faster if the map doesn't need any additional scaling with the formulae. Remember that if you have additional materials (color, bump etc.) assigned to the object, you will need to change the 'redefine reflected' setting in the extras part of the material for each material to the same. The reason is that this information is always mixed. So setting white in one and nothing in the other (if using two materials) would result in a 'redefine reflected' which is grey.