Surely, the Metal MatCap does not necessarily show the shininess, but you’ll notice that dark areas will have no gloss when you rotate the model, similar to metal when it rusts. If you change the render view to flat, you will actually see how the spec map will look in Photoshop (Fig.05).

Fig.05

Now, export your specular map by creating a texture first from the colour and apply that image to a model in your 3D package – and voila! (Fig.06a – b) Note: don’t forget to set the RGB strength back to 100.

Fig.06a

Fig.06b

In my case, I’m using XSI; you can see the advantages of creating seamless specular maps with no fuss (Fig.07). You can add other details like the cavity map to the existing texture to enhance it, and it also eliminates the guesswork of how the map might look.