The Materials panel controls material properties of surfaces.
It works with the target object in the same way that the
Appearance panel does.
Figure 3.7: The Materials Panel.
Transparent
This button determines whether transparency is enabled. Geomview itself
does not fully support transparency yet and on some machines it does not
work at all. (The missing piece is implementation of a depth-sorting
algorithm in the rendering engine; not difficult, but just not done
yet.) Use RenderMan if you want real transparency: when transparency is
enabled, a RenderMan snapshot will contain the alpha information.
Alpha
This slider determines the opacity/transparency when transparency is
enabled. 0 means totally transparent, 1 means totally opaque.
Diffuse Reflectance
This slider controls the diffuse reflectance of a surface. This has
to do with how much the surface scatters light that it reflects.
Shininess
This slider controls how shiny a surface is. This determines the
size of specular highlights on the surface. Lower values give the
surface a duller appearance.
Ambient Reflectance
This slider controls how much of the ambient light a surface reflects.
Specular Reflectance
This slider controls the specular reflectance of a surface. This
has to do with how directly the surface reflects light rays. Higher
values give brighter specular highlights.
