Week 5 Class Practical: Part 2 - Specular Shading

The second part of this weeks class practical will revolve around the specular shading attributes of a material an using this to create a shiny metallic effect on an object. To begin with, the specular shading parameters can only be found on materials with specular highlights (such as blinn, phong etc). The common specular settings for materials with specular highlights are specular colour (defining the colour of the highlighted area and the intensity of this highlight) and reflectivity (that adjusts the level of reflection on the object, 0 being non-reflective and 1 for very reflective). Some materials have extra specular shading parameters, such as eccentricity and specular roll-off, but not all materials share these parameters.

In an exercise I have been tasked with creating an object and applying a material with specular highlights to it. Using this material and the different parameters I need to adjust the material so it resembles a shiny metal. To begin I made a sphere and assigned the material "blinn" to it. I adjusted the various settings in both common material attributes and specular shading until I created something I feel looks like a shiny metallic surface. I opted to try and replicate a golden surface and below is the finished product and the settings used to create this object.