How to set specular intensity and hardness in Blender Internal nodes

Question

I am learning how to build shaders out of nodes in Blender Internal and I am confused about setting specular intensity and hardness.

Obviously I can just set set the intensity and hardness in the properties panel, but I would like to wire them up into my node network. I've tried both the "Material" node and the "Extended Material" node but as far as I can tell they don't have any inputs our outputs for specular intensity or hardness. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Try this:

For the inputs on the Material node

1. Add >> Input >> RGB (String RGB Color Output to Color Input)

2. Add >> Input >> Value (String Value Output to Spec Input)

3. Add >> Input >> Value (String Value Output to DiffuseIntensity)

The combinations of these three can mimic and exceed the capabilities of the property sliders.

To Start with Set RGB to R:0.8,G:0.8, B:0.8

For Spec set the value to: 0.8

For DiffuseIntesity set the value to: 0.8

These values should get you pretty close (if not exact to the default material).

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Specular Intensity

Without Nodes: Specular Intensity Controls the main "Light" bounce (Size/Intensity).

With Nodes: The Value of Spec correlates to "Specular Intensity"

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To demonstrate this: with use nodes disabled, set Specular Intensity to 0.8.

Now toggle (enable / disable) use nodes to see the difference.

Now in the node editor change the Spec value to 1.5, now toggle again.

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Hardness

With use node disabled set Hardness to 40.

With use nodes enabled in the node editor

Do the following:

1. Set color (R:0.55,G:0.55,B:0.55)

2. Set Spec: 1.8

3. Set DiffuseIntensity: 0.7

Now Toggle

This isn't perfect but it will be close.

The whole reason for going through the exercise is to show how NON-Intuituve these parameters are to set on their own.

You can get there, but there are parameters to consider that the property sliders just make way easy for the user.