HDRI+IBL=cool
Continuing with my lighting experiments for my skin shading, I’ve been experimenting with Image Based Lighting using HDRIs. One can easily use a Final Gather setup to get the “lighting” but the result is only as good. That’s why I decided to mess around with the ibl node instead.
The image above shows the ibl sphere surrounding the “scene”. According to what I read, there is a problem with most HDRIs and their gamma values, so one has to use this “gamma correction” node in Maya to make the IBL lit the image correctly. For this particular scene, I used a gamma setting of 8 on the three channels. The higher the value the lower the lighting values. The default value of 1 always renders a completely washed out image!
The final image shows a render test using the default “crappy shadow and anti-alias” values. I can even decide wether to render a completely diffuse or specular image directly on the node. Layering renders anybody? 
