I agree we don't want Poser's version of specular, which is not as good as the unbiased true blurry reflections we get from Lux.

But - what we lose is procedural patterns. It is impossible, for example, to reproduce my fish scale shader, as seen in my avatar, in LuxRender or YafaRay. They simply are missing ordinary math - add, subtract, multiply, divide, power, root, log, sin, cos, tan, etc. Without these math functions, you cannot make arbitrary mathematical functions, and therefore you cannot make as many patterns.

We get hung up on the fact that shaders have two jobs - define the pattern of the material, as well as define the interaction of the material with light. Lux is hugely better at the interaction with light. It is painfully weak at defining patterns.

---

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)