Auto HDRI Light Gen 1.0.0 for Maya (maya script)

Tool : Auto HDRI Light Gen V1.0

I was inspired by lighting pipeline of Digital Domain and ILM. So I decided to challenge myself by creating my own pipeline tool. After couple of months, I finally came up with working solution and it's called "Auto HDRI Light Gen v1.0". It's semi-automatic light generator and uses input HDRI . Before I start explain about my tool, I want to address the limitations of Image Based Lighting system.

­ Image Based Lighting(IBL) is common lighting technique in CG industry. Especially in VFX field, IBL becomes essential technique. Current IBL method does create very convincing and realistic result in short amount of time and effort. However there are several limitations with it. IBL system such as ENV sphere lighting is not distance based light; it's ambient light. Thus all of objects in 3D scene will have same amount of light intensity, color, and shadow. If you are interesting in 3D lighting, you should know these two properties of physical light; first manmade artificial light have distance based falloff in light intensity; second distance and size of light source directly affect length and softness of shadow. ENV sphere light is not distance based light and it often results flat unpleasing render. Thus I'm going to write about recent industry tips and my method to overcome current IBL system.