The big limitation for Tugmaster's technique (and similar) is that there aren't always dark shadows where there should be. That's the result of using non-shadow casting lights. The 'underside' of surfaces can go dark, but any nearby surfaces of an 'upward' persuasion are brightly lit. Check out the base of the spotting scope where it mounts to the tripod. At least parts of those vertical surfaces should be as dark as the underside of the scope tube. The insides of the ear mufflers are bright, even right under the lip of the surround. The base of the rifle bipod goes dark almost to black - there is no corresponding shadow area on the table. And as a technique for simulating radiosity it fails, of course, because there is absolutely no diffuse reflection/illumination between surfaces. I think that lighting method is fine for displaying models clearly (such as the excellent ones in that pic), but it doesn't succeed in achieving realism. A note about 'GI' or Global Illumination. None of these light dome techniques can come anywhere near close to simulating it: "Global illumination is a superset of radiosity and ray tracing. The goal is to compute all possible light interactions in a given scene, and thus obtain a truely photorealistic image. All combinations of diffuse and specular reflections and transmissions must be accounted for. Effects such as colour bleeding and caustics must be included in a global illumination simulation." http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/images/global.html Global Illumination simulations require everything to be simulated. 'GI' has nothing to do with globes or spheres.