ok.. lets get serious here.. does anyone know how Specular Mapping works in Posers 5/6 and how to apply it properly?
we have the facilites to do it now but little in the way of Information availible...

erm thanks Stewer, but thats not what I was thinking..

I mean, how do we make the maps? what are the best settings in the Mat Room? (I've tried and I've seen no difference... so I am doing something wrong here...) what are the best settings for Metal, Plastic, Wood, Paint, Chipped Paint over Metal or wood... etc

eg with Displacement, Black is zero and White is High.. whats the scale in Specular? is black untouched or transperent and White is mirror finish?..... there's so much the manual don't say...

Attached Link: http://www.onona3d.com/pdf/texturing.pdf

A good start would be Leigh's texturing tutorial. While I completely disagree with chapter 4 (there's a huge CGTalk thread about it if you want to know about the diffusion confusion), the rest of her tutorial is first class. My one sentence spec map tutorial would be: Make it white where you want it to be shiny.

"with Displacement, Black is zero and White is High.. whats the scale in Specular? is black untouched or transperent and White is mirror finish?"

Black = 0 = no specularity. White  = 1 = full specularity. Grey-scales are in between. Transparency is not involved....

Specularity takes the light directed at  the surface, and uses that to decide how much of the surface should be "brightened" (by adding the the specularity colour, not the lights themselves).

Plugging a node into the specularity value (not the colour) will alter the amount of the effect.

I think. I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong:-)) But I think I'm right...

Cheers,
Diolma

actually I'm finding plugging a map into the Specular Color node does very little, if any thing. that got me thinking.

Specularity relies on a small amount of reflectivity. so....

I tried this : took my Spec Map, plugged into the Specular Color, then plugged the map into a Anistropic Node ( in the Spec Color,, Value, Uhighlight and vhighlight) then the Anistropic Node into the Reflection Color.

it worked I think..
it looks right ...