One of the most most important things for me is that the highlights and shadows match the supposed light sources. If they don't, it screams FAKE. One of the many reasons that I detested Toy Story is that they didn't think through the lighting issues. Somebody spent and billed 9 months work for the shader on Andy's hair... but not one person considered where the light in the kid's room was coming from? The main promo image has the bed and all the toys. 11 separate light sources if you look at where all the highlights are. Lovingly rendered. The huge picture window showing bright daylight outside is not a lightsource? Bullshit! Somebody blew it badly. The light from that window would have cast shadows even if it didn't make neat pinpricks. Fake. Fake. Fake. When the viewer is snickering, she isn't absorbed in the image or the story. I have complained many, many times in this forum about painted-on highlights, especially on commercial textures. Look at the image above as a typical example where the eyes don't even have the light from the same direction, and the cloudy evenness of HDRI wouldn't leave highlights like that, anyway. Why should I buy a texture and have to take it into PhotoShop to remove the highlights? It is either that, or try to match my scene lighting to where the texture artist placed the eye highlights... and if they are on flipped irises, that is impossible. At best. There is a wonderful old man texture in the Marketplace that I've looked at several times, but the glow on the skin is directional (the flipping in her promopics show it clearly), and I don't want to be tied down OR to have to repaint it. The textural is photo-real... but only if the room lighting matches it. When I place my room lights, I want all the highlights and all the shadows to conform to that lighting. Interior scenes with controlled lighting are more critical. Outside, bounced lighting offers a little bit more freedom, but sunlight is often so strong that it overrides all else. For bad lighting, I can point to outdoor scenes where the figures are throwing 2 or more shadows on the grass. Unless we've been transported to Tatooine, we will only produce one shadow under strong sunlight. Eye highlights in the front and sun in the back is a bad combo. Painted highlights on hair is also problematical, but not as much as in the eyes. Hair is wispy and translucent enough that it might be catching the light. Besides getting the direction of the highlights and light sources to match, one also needs to consider the shape and strength and color of highlights. Remember childhood cartoons where the highlight in the character's eye was shaped like a 4-paned window (typical 1950's house). Fine for indoor scenes. Stupid outdoors. The triangle or teardrop shape is a lot more forgiving when characters are moving around from scene to scene. All we have to work with IS light. Little photons go splat against the backside of a pice of glass, and we need to make them look like desert (harsh, clear, strong definitions) or foggy dene with will-of-the-wisps (indeterminate glow). With good lighting, the scene looks real enough to step into... with no niggling sense of falseness... no matter where in the universe we are taking the viewer. All of this, of course, applies to realistic scenes where we are portraying 3 dimensions. Cartoons or decorative pieces have their own parameters. Carolly