Brilliance Brilliance is, in my opinion, extremely useful. It allows you to specify how an object diffuses the light hitting it. The illumination of an object is a function of the angle of the light hitting it. A higher angle of incidence creates more illumination, and a lower angle of incidence causes less illumination. Brilliance lets you control how much an angle of incidence illuminates the object.
High values tend to make an object look metallic.
It works really well when used with lighting effects. 1 is the default value, but brilliance values can be any number. These define the amount of phong phong highlighting an object has. The phong statement requires a number between 0 and 1, and defines 0 means overall intensity of the highlight. No highlight and is default, while 1 defines full highlight.