Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Isn't that one of the things that makes a surface look metalic? That the 
> reflected rays retain their own color because the photons are bouncing 
> off the free valence electrons roaming around on the surface of the 
> material, rather than hitting a bound electron in a particular "shell"?

  Most materials reflect light at least partially specularly. That's why
you can see highlights of the light's own color on most surfaces, or at
least something closer to the light's color than to the surface's color.
The phong highlighting used in rendering is a cheap way of simulating this,
and it usually makes surfaces look like plastic, as most plastics have an
accentuated (blurred) specular reflection property.

  IIRC metals behave a bit differently and can affect specular reflection
in other ways, but I don't remember details.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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