How to make a shiny effect
There we go specular lighting! I couldn't remember the word so I called it a shiny glossy effect. So know all I need to do is figure out how to achive this effect. So those this mean games like super mario 3d land, mario kart 7, and other 3d mario games use specular lighting?
The specular term is just a single part of your lighting, usually combined with some ambient and diffuse lighting. It represents the reflected light and is usually computed based on the surface normal, light position and the view position - as opposed to the diffuse term that doesn't depend on the view position but only the normal and light position, and the ambient term that's just a constant everywhere.
The wikipedia article for Blinn-Phong shading (usually just "Phong shading") is probably a good place to start.
Specular lighting+ambient lighting+diffuse lighting= shiny/glossy effect. Or is specular lighting what you get when you add both ambient and diffuse lighting togethor?
oh yeah what level of specular lighting, ambient lighting, and diffue lighting is in the mario kart 7 pictures that I posted?
Specular lighting+ambient lighting+diffuse lighting= shiny/glossy effect. Or is specular lighting what you get when you add both ambient and diffuse lighting togethor?
oh yeah what level of specular lighting, ambient lighting, and diffue lighting is in the mario kart 7 pictures that I posted?
Not quite, you are over-simplifying this. The "shiny effect" you are looking for is the result of a few reflectivity constants that are properties of something in graphics called a material, or surface material. Every surface is going to have in general three reflectivity constants, ambient, diffuse, and specular (there can be other properties as well, I am speaking for a general case). Ambient, diffuse and specular reflection are all different ways that light interacts and affects a particular surface. As an example, chrome and wood both have unique surface materials that each interact with light differently -- thus a chrome and wood material both have different values for their reflectivity constants.
In particular, specular highlighting and specular reflectance are generally attributed to describing the "shininess of an object":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_reflection
There are many shading and reflection models that can be used to represent the effect you are looking for, here are some examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_reflection_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinn%E2%80%93Phong_shading_model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oren%E2%80%93Nayar_reflectance_model
After that you just need to play with your reflectivity constants to get the material "look" that you want! :)
Specular lighting+ambient lighting+diffuse lighting= shiny/glossy effect. Or is specular lighting what you get when you add both ambient and diffuse lighting togethor?
oh yeah what level of specular lighting, ambient lighting, and diffue lighting is in the mario kart 7 pictures that I posted?
To put it simply, specular lighting is the light that reflects directly at the viewer at a certain point, that is the full color of the light (usually white but specular highlights can be any other color), as opposed to diffuse lighting which is the reflected color of the object, which filters certain wavelengths of light. An explanation of how shiny materials work
In practice we don't accurately model molecular properties of materials for games, so it is simpler to tell the program what color an object is (in normal, flat white lighting). Then it becomes more involved when the "original" color is changed due to other lighting properties and lighting models like the ones mentioned above.
