You know. 3D rendering is really pretty cool when you think about it. Here I am, simulating light to produce an .exr file. A file with so much information, it looks "wrong" to see it native. It's beyond the capability of my device to display it. Instead, I have to perform an HDR conversion, tone mapping to get the right kind of range I want. Exposure, not limited by ranges already clamped down, is free to produce a clean simulation. Or something. I dunno, I'm still very new to the stuff and terms. Regardless, it's beautiful and what you can do with that information can be beautiful.

Maybe I'll take some time to do a scrap showing the wide range of variations you can get with small, simple tweaks to the lighting and broad strokes with the HDR conversion.

But, for now, this image is one magnificent example of what I get to play with. The output from the render, the simple Maya tone-mapped image that it displays, is virtually pitch black. But, open the .exr adjust the washed out image's gamma to the correct setting, maybe tweak the exposure some, and then start playing with local adaption.

Do this, and the result is a blossoming of color and light from otherwise unseen sources. Stars glow bright and sparkling with bleached tints. The glowing survival suits bloom under cloth; dance and mix on the walls. Subtle alterations by the material properties they are cast upon grow to look like rays and give depth to flat textures.

Well, perhaps if you're not viewing it on a dim-lit phone anyways ;3

In the regular lighting for this scene, all this beauty is lost to the overpowering room lights. The stars are swallowed in darkness. The suits' glow corralled back to their strips in flat hues. Diffuse transmission effects of the cloth is flattened to white almost everywhere, if local adaption is not carefully applied to preserve its details.

But yes, this frame was rejected from the pages I'm working on (the next ones will be done... soon.) As pretty as it is, it ultimately doesn't hit the marks I was aiming for and the suits' array of lights are too uneven and unbalanced between the figures to 'feel' right.