Nerd: You are right but you can use it as an Image Based Light image.....a nice bright contrasty image with lots of colour will work nicely....willadd the colours on the model...as if it were in the background.... As for Probes, you want a full HDR ( hi dynamic Range, not necessarily colour) ....my picture looks flat but has a full range 248. 235, 255 in the hi lites and almost 5, 7, 5 in the shadow end ~m

Yeah, in my first expiriments with IBL that's what I was using. Just snap shots. That's what got me started trying to figure out how they were being handled. Here's a potential example If you wanted to use a square snapshot for an IBL source but the light source was way up in one corner you probably wouldn't get the intended results. The light in the corner would not get sampled. In a case like that a paint program that has a Polar Coordinate filter could be used to roll the image up in a ball. It wouldn't be exact, but at least the entire image gets sampled. Nerd3D

Attached Link: http://www.debevec.org/IBL2003/

I went for using snapshots as well and now use 8mm lenses to shoot the backlight to the forground I use in my photo-composites. I then spherize them more to make them ( 180?) in Photoshop after reading Paul Debeve's articles ( see url above)

Thanx for all the information. The guys here are really good about sharing and I'd like to do the same....

~m

Message edited on: 04/09/2005 15:57

AKmaterialroombookmark

Interesting. Very interesting!

Upsy for the light challenged among us, LOL