Quote - no, i'm not contradicting myself.  face_off's  skin realism kits took into account lights.  Matmatic generated materials can also do this.  they are not automatically light independent.   if you are using equations to generate any lighting effects like SSS, you could find your setup is light dependent as well. 

if you use Matmatic to generate a light specific effect (as opposed to something like wood grain or fabric texture), you need to actually go through your initial suppositions and then test to make sure that your effect is not light specific.   and gives results that are just better and worse, not accurate and inaccurate.

for instance, let's say you have some sort of shader involving AO.  you're going to make some equations involving distance and  position.  if you're not careful, your initial equations describing the relationship among items might not be general enough.  when you're setting up those equations and imagining the variables, you have to make sure you're not taking something important for granted.

the point being, using Matmatic does not mean you don't have to think about your materials being light independent.  you actually have to think about it more , because you are determining the material.  

I think were talking in circles here. Yes a shader, if specific enough, needs to then look at the specific lights used. However that is not what is being done in this discussion. She simply wants to give her customers a better looking character and is trying to use matmatic to help her do that. It's a great idea and I wish all vendors were as thoughtful.

Don