I've added some blured reflection to the ground and a higher tessellation to the sphere. I've also adjusted the ramp on the sphere to get red reflection on the lit side.

Here is the result.



Look at the nice blured reflection



It is another shading network, I'll explain in another tut.

You can go further and make the sphere reciever and emeter. You can also tweak the effect by coloring the lights in this exemple all the light are white and the shadows are not colored too.

Hope you enjoyed this tut .

I have to thank Tom Kluyskens for his great Shading Networks course I encourage you to get this tape and Also Emanuel Campin who inspired me this tuts with his DomeLights systeme .

Also a message to AW : Maybe you should make the distanceBetween and the closestPointOnSurface node avaliable via the Create Render Node window in Maya 4.0. these are terific node.

Nicolas AITHADI aka "casquette"

Freelance Maya /Renderman

nicolas@nrender.com