jrabbit, having a little bit of trouble following you line of thought.... "where would this gray come from in the center of the background (caths lattitude map) which is clearly white ?" You haven't indicated which IBL image you are using, so I assumed you are using the one in post 3 - which has grey as the BACK illunimation color. That is where the grey comes from! "Makes no sense . The outer edges of the angular map (gray)represent rear .... so if the light is working correctly and we are facing a white section of a backdrop why would it turn gray ? Or for that matter why would you want your whites to turn gray ? thats silly." OK, you stand with your back to a red wall. Now have a friend stand in front of you (facing you and the red wall). They will not see you illunimated by red, they will see you illunimated by whatever light there is behind them. Now covert that scenerio to use the map in post 3. FRONT = white. Therefore, the back of your friend, and the FRONT of you would be illuminated WHITE. And your rear, and you friends FRONT would be illuminated GREY (being the BACK color of the IBL). So it is wrong to use the IBL in it's current form as the background (ie. what your friend sees behind you). In reality your friend would see GREY behind you...which is....the BACK of the IBL in post 3. Therefore, the IBL needs rotating 180 degrees before you use it as the background. But just doing tha5t isn't enough, because then left and right are wrong, so you flip the background image too. "No matter what direction the spheres center will face you , and be white because as you rotate it its center becomes what you face" The IBL lighting is fixed in Poser World space - so if you rotate the camera 180 degrees, you will view the lighting from behind. So if you place the IBL from post 3 as an IBL, at a camera Y rotation of 0 degrees, the sphere will have white at the front. But rotate the camera 180 degrees, and the sphere will have black in the middle. And just to prove it - see attached renders - IBL lighting only. Top image with camera at 0 y rot. Bottom image with 180 degrees rot. "Also white on the IBL color map represents center (all centers)." Errrrr, no. White in the middle of the map represents light coming from the direction of the camera when the camera is not rotated on any of it axis. "either way if you flip the IBL map in the light node or conversly the background map(equals same effect) you create an out of phase projection" No, they do NOT give the same effect! Flipping the IBL map in it's mirrorball mode does nothing constructive (other than put ground light above, and sky light below). Flipping the background however takes you half way to the correct solution. Maybe it needs to be spelled out again..... - Flip the Bachkground (not the IBL image) - Rotate the scene lighting (not the background) using one of the 3 methods I described in my previous post. "By flipping you create a new problem that you ask to hide by turning off reflection " At what point did reflections come into this? Bring reflections into the equation is just giong to confuse you even more. Get the basics right first, then take it from there. However, if you want correct reflections from the environment, you need to add a skydome, and paste the (adjusted in HDRShop) IBL image into the ambient channel of the dome, and use a square for your background (pasted with the flipped background image). "Very simply by flipping... the red on the IBL light now projects on the green side and the green on the IBL light projects on the red side of the back ground " jrabbit, you are flipping the IBL image!!!! At no point in this entire thread has anyone indicated to flip the IBL image.

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