What are specular and glossiness maps?
Specular maps define the relative strength of highlights on a surface. You can think of them as masks for telling the renderer where and how much light should be reflected in the textures. Specular maps can be either grayscale or in color. Colored specular maps are typically used when you want to fake global illumination within the texture itself and\or if you want to simulate surface transparency. If, for instance, we take a look at tree leaves, they have a tendency to shift hue towards yellow when they are lit and you could in this case make all the leaves in the specular map yellow or even red. Specularity is added to the final image, so they can only make your textures brighter. Glossiness maps are usually used to define how dry or wet the specular highlights look. Glossiness maps are not that common in real time render engines yet as it gives pretty good results to have separate global glossiness values for each material. Q: What are reflection/environment maps? A: Raytracing refl
