I did this image using ONLY ONE IBL with AO. No specular lights at all.

The IBL probe was just a blob of white on a dark gray background. This produced reasonable shading that didn't look flat.

Then I added shader nodes that SIMULATE specular reflection. This involved doing a dot product of the Normal vector with a hypothetical infinite light vector, take that through a step function, then raise it to the 10th power, then edge blend, then diffuse.

This is, of course, a HUGE waste of effort because its so much easier just to use two lights. But, I really wanted to see if it could be done.

Message edited on: 12/23/2005 15:05

Message edited on: 12/23/2005 15:06

Forgot to mention, even the eye glint is a shader node using vector math.

HUH?!?!? :)

" This involved doing a dot product of the Normal vector with a hypothetical infinite light vector, take that through a step function, then raise it to the 10th power, then edge blend, then diffuse." And I'm sure the boys at JPL are thrilled. Very nice image though, superb lighting. She looks real from the shoulders down.

bookmarks this in case there's more coming Sounds and does look exciting :)

Real for a Manequin maybe! Do real people's shoulder and arms bend that way? o.O

Haha - Jessi IS ugly - I use her for shader experiments because then I only have two materials to edit - head and body.

Stewers got a hot thread over at dna that might interest you. Scripting 2 8bit maps to get full hdr back in poser. I'm impressed with your discovery but the telltale black eyes are there from Light source AO. It tends to leave ferocious artifacts on figure props (buildings, backdrops, etc). Have you tried attaching AO to figure yet?

Bagginsbill, great lighting in post #1.

Thanks for the compliments folks. Funny thing is I wasn't trying to make GOOD lighting with the IBL. I just wanted to see if you could light a figure with nothing but an IBL. I'm waiting to see what face_off thinks, because it looks to me like the specular model I implemented as a shader node actually looks more controllable than the specular models that come with Firefly. I'm wondering if this technique could give any improvements.

It takes a lot of experimenting. Its fun though. Have a look at this strange object I just made. Its just a sphere. The shape, colors, and lights are procedural shaders. The specular on this one is another experimental custom shader, not one of the built-in lighting models. I really like this objects - its full of energy.

This shader looks very interesting. The render in msg #12 is awesome.