I've seen HDR/cube lighting applied a few different ways. Usually you precompute the lighting from various positions in the level (HL2-style) then you store each as a cubemap or PRT or somesuch. Once you have your src, it can be applied either like reflection or like diffuse. If reflection, the shader constantly factors in…
In a game, Quake 4/Doom 3 style really. I'm more interested in applying the methods to metals and gettign a nice effect between the two. ATM I'm using: Diffuse: http://www.quake2evolved.com/odium/wall1_d.jpg Local: http://www.quake2evolved.com/odium/wall1_local.jpg Spec: http://www.quake2evolved.com/odium/wall1_s.jpg
I 1up earthquake's scratchy balls with my mighty science. Behold brushed metal! It uses my high dynamic range image based anisotropic lighting shader model renderer 2.05b. There is a tangent-space direction map (much like a normal map but pointing along the surface) on the model that determines the direction of the grooves…