Quote - I have a question for you BB, I'm preparing a set of lights to go with some background images for poser to put first in freestuff with low resolutions then a larger package in the marketplace.  I don't have panaramic images to work from and use your wonderful tools with, I just want to set it up to utilize the provided image.  I want people to be able to just put a model in it, possibly use the "shadow only" ground plane (P6) and render.  There would be no objects other than the model(s) in the scene. How can I make an IBL using one reference photo? 

You may be surprised to learn that IBL lighting is pretty darn vague, and does not require much in the way of accurate detail. So it turns out that any sort of partial landscape, with nice broad horizontal strokes of color (sky, trees, ground) will work just fine.

Load your photo onto my environment sphere. Yes it is not a full panorama, but that doesn't matter - we're just trying to surround the figure with general colors.

Use my GenIBL tool to then generate an IBL image from that environment.

Then you can just discard the environment sphere. Load your background photo, and your IBL probe image. Of course, you need to tweak some directional light and do a good job with the shadow catcher. But that is true regardless of how you make the IBL.

I'll post a couple examples. I went on flickr.com and found a couple nice landscape photos that are free for use in derivative works. I will render with Simon and a few primitives. No great effort was made to match the shadows to the scenery. It should be enough to get the idea across.

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