I, too, don't understand your question, Miss Nancy. I've seen you mention something like this before, and I don't get it. I remember answering a similar point you made a while back, and you didn't follow up, so I supposed that was the end of it.

Alternate_Diffuse and Alternat_Specular (and a couple others) represent positions in the shading equation where you get to add a term to the sum that it calculates.

Of course, if you insert (plug in) a constant value, then the shader glows.

However, I never do that. I always connect a lighting node, which means in the absence of light, that term is 0. The notion that these channels glow in and of themselves isn't correct.

Given a shader root node that calculates:

A + B + C

And you put A = 0, B = Diffuse, C = Specular, then you get:

0 + Diffuse + Specular

Which is a shader that produces a diffuse reflection and a specular reflection.

If on the other hand you put A = 0, B = 0, C = RED, then you get:

RED

Which is a shader that always outputs RGB(255, 0, 0), no matter what.

It's not particularly difficult to grasp that if you insert a term that is never 0, the output is never 0. Therefore, the output would "glow".

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)