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Shading

Blinn

Is a material (shader) that is particularly effective at simulating metallic surfaces (for example, brass or aluminum) which typically have soft specular highlights.

Note Blinn is the most computationally expensive of the three common materials: Lambert, Phong, and Blinn.

You can set attributes of Blinn materials to control the size of shiny highlights and the ability of the surface to reflect its surroundings.

You can find this material in the Create bar.

Tip The soft highlights on Blinn surfaces are less likely to exhibit artifacts or flickering for thin highlights than the harder highlights on Phong surfaces. Use the Blinn surface material for surfaces with bump or displacement maps to reduce highlight artifacts or flickering.

Specular Shading attributes (Blinn)

Eccentricity

Controls the size of shiny highlights on the surface. The valid range is 0 (no highlight) to 0.999 (broad highlight, not very shiny surface). A value of 0.1 produces a small highlight (very shiny surface). The default value is 0.3.

Specular Roll Off

Gives the surface the ability to reflect its surroundings (the environment, other surfaces) or the Reflected Color, when viewed at oblique angles. The slider range is 0 to 1. The default value is 0.7.

To help visualize the effect of Specular Roll Off in a Blinn material swatch, assign a texture to the Reflected Color.

Tip Use a Specular Roll Off value of 0.3 to simulate a wet surface (for example, wet paint).

Specular Color

See Common surface material Specular Shading attributes.

Reflectivity

See Common surface material Specular Shading attributes.

Reflected Color

See Common surface material Specular Shading attributes.