I seem to recall that in Superfly a specular map is not necessary according to bagginsbill. Good sir, did you say this or is this a garbled memory on my part?

Hi Boni, you still need a specular map. Usually, a surface is never evenly shiny, and with a "specular map" you indicate, which parts of the surface are more or less shiny. But instead of a "specular map" you can also use a "roughness map" for the glossy shader. I always use a "specular map" for all shaders, with skin shaders also a "highlights map" on a second gloss layer.

LG NobbC

Thanks Nobby! I will add this info to my tool set!

In real life, all surfaces reflect light and the difference is how sharply or diffusely they do. Therefore, replacing "specular maps" with "roughness maps" will produce more accurate results in PBR render engines.

The PBR shader BB produced for Superfly discarded specular maps altogether, but Smith Micro nuked their Poser forum so the thread explaining the theory behind it is now lost.

noobalien! That is what I was thinking about! thank you. I'm not quite as crazy as I thought. That's a relief!

Often, the old specular map is a good starting point to make the roughness map. An easy way to do it is by inverting the image it in your preferred graphic editor, and then reducing the contrast until the higher and lower values match your desired threshold. Old specular maps usually have extreme 100% whites and blacks which are unrealistic for PBR

In my experience, it's advisable to save the new map as grayscale in sGray profile, and set its gamma correction to 1 inside Poser, so the value you see in the map is the value you get in the render

Yes, Spec maps are in my work flow. As Nooby mentioned without one you get too evenly flow of light over skin and such where there should be micro amounts of the surface broken up to give a more realistic effect!