MN,

The Blinn node shows reflections of (point) lights (spot lights are "points" as well) and by adjusting the "eccentricity" you get blurred reflections of these point sources. But Blinn node does not do anything at all with objects. So if you are using a no-light setup, such as pure EnvSphere lighting via IDL, you get absolutely nothing from the Blinn.

On the other hand, the Reflect node shows reflections of 3D objects, and by adjusting the "softness" you get blurred reflections of each point of these 3D objects. But the Reflect node does not do anything at all with lights. So if you are using a no-environment setup, such as traditional non-IDL and many lights, you get absolutely nothing from the Reflect.

If you are doing a hybrid, with objects and lights, you need both. And that is what I do - both.

The tricky advanced thing I did in my shader is I have a dial for the blur, and it correctly modulates both the Blinn Eccentricity and Reflect Softness, in perfect agreement about the size of the smear from a given point source. That is what I think makes my shader worthwhile - that I connected the two so they agree.

What that means is if you have a point light and a distant glowing sphere, with the same luminance on both, what you see reflected on a sphere of these two objects (via the two different nodes) will look the same. This was very tricky.

If you look at your demo, you'll see you did not achieve that agreement.

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