9

1578 Chapter 16: Material Editor, Materials, and Maps
glittery reflections of, for example, an HDRI
environment. The value 0.0 turns the effect off.
This effect should generally b e very subtle; a
valueof0.1isoftenenough.Thefinalintensityof
reflections also depends on the Flake Color and
Flake Weight values.
Fla ke s pecul a r e x pon ent —The Phong specular
exponent for the flakes.
Fla ke d ens i t y —Thedensityoftheflakes. The
useful range is f rom 0.1 to approximately 10.0,
where lower va lues indicate sparser flakes and
higher values indicates denser flakes.
Flak e decay distance—Thedistanceatwhichthe
influence of the flakes fades out. A valu e of 0 .0
disables fading. Any positive va lue c auses the
Flake Weight value to be modulated so that it
reacheszeroatthisdistance.
Because flakes are relatively sma l l, using c an
introduce rendering artifacts if their v isual density
becomes significantly smaller than a pixel. If
the oversampling of the rendering is set high,
small fla kes can also potent ially trigger massive
oversampling and hence overlong rendering times
needlessly, because the averaging caused by the
oversampling will essentially cancel out the fla ke
effect. If you experience these issues, use Flake
Decay D istance to counteract them.
Flakes at different distances with no flake decay. The farthest
flakes might cause flicker in animations, or trigger unnecessary
oversampling and long render times (rendered here with low
oversampling for illustrative purposes).
Using flake decay. The flake strength diminishes with distance.
The same intentionally low oversampling as in the previous
image has been used.
Fla ke s t r en gth —The difference between the
orientation of the flakes . The useful range is
0.0 to 1.0 where 0.0 means that a ll flakes are
parallel to the surface, w hile higher values vary the
orientation of flakes increasingly.
Fla ke s cal e—Thesizeoftheflakes.Theprocedural
texture is calculated in object space, and will hence
follow the object. Thus, the sca le is influenced by
any scale transformation on the object.
Specular reflections rollout
Specular Color #1—The color of the primary
specular highlight.
Specular Weight # 1—A scalar multiplier applied to
Specular Color #1.
Specular exponent # 1—The Phong exponent of
Specular Color #1.
Specular Color #2—The color of the secondary
specular highlight.
Specular Weight # 2—A scalar multiplier applied to
Specular Color #2.