Material Node

The material node specifies color, light reflection and transparency. This node can only be defined inside an Appearance node. 

This node has six fields: diffuseColor, emissiveColor, ambientIntensity, shininess, specularColor, and transparency

The diffuseColor field defines the color of the geometry. Note: This field is ignored when using colored textures. 

The emissiveColor is used to define glowing objects. 

 The ambientIntensity field specifies the amount of light reflected by the geometry. 

 The specularColor field defines the color of the shiny spots of the geometry. 

 The shininess controls the intensity of the glow for the shiny spots, small values represent soft glows, whereas high values define smaller and sharper highlights. 

 The transparency field controls the transparency of the associated geometry (I know, it is a circular definition...). If a value of 0.0 is specified then the related geometry is completely opaque, a value of 1.0 means that the geometry is completely transparent. 

 All the "Color" fields have an RGB value associated, i.e., three floating point values between 0.0 and 1.0. The other fields have a single floating point value between 0.0 and 1.0. 

 Syntax 
Material { 
diffuseColor 0.8 0.8 0.8 
ambientIntensity 0.2 
emissiveColor 0.0 0.0 0.0 
specularColor 0.0 0.0 0.0 
shininess 0.2 
transparency 0.0