[feldon34]

I'm sure Jim will answer with a more robust answer than I will, but I believe that...

Specular is the quality of the light reflecting off an object directly at you. More specifically, the vertex normals (hi Cliff!) pointing more or less at you. This specular quality is very important in parlaying realism.

In the old games, we'd see a crumpled basketball jersey on a player with the crumples "highlighted" no matter what angle the player was facing. Very unrealistic. In new games with specular highlights, only the parts facing us are shiny and it greatly improves this realism.


Specular light has sharpness/dullness, brightness, and color properties. Different combinations of the 3 can make us believe that a 3D object is actually made of cloth, plastic, glass, metal, etc. It is the biggest hint which can be given as to an object's actual makeup.


Jim uses a procedural specular, which guess which parts of the image should be shiny and which parts aren't. I believe it looks at the pixels in the texture and decides which should be shiny.

If you look at the Copperband Butterfly, it has a sharply defined, very bright, white-copper specular highlight. The Royal Gramma has a diffuse (soft), not quite as bright, reddish specular highlight. The Wimplefish has a diffuse, white specular which only really shows up on the black parts of its skin.


More advanced specular lighting is sometimes needed. This is done in the form of a specular map, which explicitly tells the 3D engine how each texture is affected by ambient light, giving the 3D artist complete control.

The realism of the Goldfish Aquarium has been lacking for me because the scales are not reflective. To my knowledge, the Goldfish Aquarium is not using any kind of specular lighting at all. Reichart assures me that adding full specular lighting to the Goldfish is a priority.

To see what incredible effects can be done with bump maps and specular maps, look at the game "Halo" for XBox.