I've been experimenting for the whole day, and after so much work I'm starting to feel happier about the realism in my renders.

I tried real HDRI in Poseray, but couldn't get enough control over the lights. Finally Flyerx gave me some clues (and that's going to be my next step). So I dumped the HDRI, and gave RDNA's Poor Man's HDRI lights a try, it worked great and the effect despite of being too soft and shadowless, rendered the image above. It's my best image so far! However I still feel the face is not properly lit, and that's the biggest telltale. Any suggestions?

Rendering took a long while... (30 mins?). So next time i'll make sure to add a very soft spotlight to the face, or something...! Well, that's it for now! Feel free to post any comments. *Oh, as you can see, i never used backgrounds before, so i had some problems centering the sky image...

Message edited on: 10/26/2004 17:10