Float 3 normalize control in radiosity shader

[RBURKE]

Well i was able to easily recreate the fake radiosity shader as detailed in the tutorial and i was able to implement it flawlessly into my maya scene, with the position offset and all. But now i realized something when it came time to link up my lights.
The float 3 normalize node from what i can tell is basically giving me a generic direction from which the light would be coming from and then being used to create a super basic lighting model. well im using this lighting as sort of a ambient level that i can control and it seems to work well for that. but here is where i hit a snag. I want the light direction to be derived from a light position.

Now with normal lights and a lot of other nodes i can just use the connection editor to link the maya light attributes to the shader attributes. however i cant seem to find a way to link the lights location to the float 3 normalize node. so when i move my lights in the scene i end up with this basic lighting model remaining fixed. Is there a way i can link this nodes values to a light or a locator or something so when i move my light the float 3 normalize adjusts its variables accordingly.

or would i be better off replacing this basic lighting model with one of the more advanced illumination models and mixing it the radiosity the same way.
if it helps this entire network was being made into a phenomenon that i was then mixing into more advanced illuminations models.

if my question needs clarification just ask.

[Ian_]

I'm not sure what the purpose was for, with the generic light direction, in the tutorial. I would definitely use a more advanced lighting setup, that gets added to the radiosity. Although, you may want to make sure that the radiosity image represents the same amount of light that is suppose to be reflected you are trying to simulate, in order to make the shader more realistic looking, if you know what I mean.

[RBURKE]

yeah i went back and recreate it with a more advanced illum model and it worked like i wanted it too, also added a normal state to the radiosity node which makes it so much more believable. Then i pipe that into another shader which has all the other effects i want for a material and it looks awsome. All in all once i created the phenom it has something like 12 controls which makes it a great all purpose shader for me.

[ruediger]

The example does the same effect that's presented in the paper which explains that technique. The requirement was to have one directional sunlight, so the illumination just that parameter.
However, more sophisticated light models should be easy to implement and it's good to read that there's more work going on.
Do you have some eye-candy that you can share with us?

Best Regards,
Ruediger