---
title: specular
framework: scenekit
role: symbol
role_heading: Instance Property
path: scenekit/scnmaterial/specular
---

# specular

An object that manages the material’s specular response to lighting.

## Declaration

```swift
var specular: SCNMaterialProperty { get }
```

## Discussion

Discussion Specular shading describes the amount and color of light reflected by the material directly toward the viewer, forming a bright highlight on the surface and simulating a glossy or shiny appearance. You adjust the sharpness of specular highlights using the material’s shininess property. By default, the specular property’s contents object is a black color, causing the material to appear dull or matte. Changing the specular property’s contents to a brighter color causes specular highlights to appear in that color, making the surface appear shiny. When you apply a texture to the specular property, the texture image becomes a specular map—the brightness of each pixel in the image determines the tendency of each point on the material’s surface to create specular highlights when lit. The figure below shows a material (with a texture for its diffuse property) before and after providing a specular map image. Notice that the bright specular highlights appear only on portions of the surface where the specular map image is white.

The material’s lightingModel property determines the formula SceneKit uses to combine its specularity and other visual properties with lights and other contents in a scene to produce the final color for each rendered pixel in the rendered scene. For details, see Lighting Models. This material property does not apply to physically-based materials (see physicallyBased).

## See Also

### Related Documentation

- [normal](scenekit/scnmaterial/normal.md)
- [emission](scenekit/scnmaterial/emission.md)

### Visual Properties for Basic Shading

- [diffuse](scenekit/scnmaterial/diffuse.md)
- [ambient](scenekit/scnmaterial/ambient.md)
- [reflective](scenekit/scnmaterial/reflective.md)
- [multiply](scenekit/scnmaterial/multiply.md)
- [transparent](scenekit/scnmaterial/transparent.md)
- [shininess](scenekit/scnmaterial/shininess.md)
- [fresnelExponent](scenekit/scnmaterial/fresnelexponent.md)
- [locksAmbientWithDiffuse](scenekit/scnmaterial/locksambientwithdiffuse.md)