Heres my updated video with the linked spotlight and keyframed ibl. I painted my guy black (skin, clothes hair and eyes) to keep the silloette look even when there's a light on him. Good exercise.

Im going to work on a backlight scene tonight if I get time. My attempts have always looked crappy. Yours looks really good.

The key (pardon the pun), is using 3 lights. There is a key light (front, facing avatar), but it is very dim. Two other lights are used as "rim" lights. They are much brighter. The key has shadows disabled, while the rims have shadows enabled. Spots or directional will work.

In a studio, you usually want really soft, diffuse light for portrait work. In the real-world, you would use those giant light boxes that have a white, opaque front. In our virtual 'Clonverse, we can simulate that kind of lighting by setting the characteristics of the surface that the light is hitting. In this particular case, that would be the avatar's skin, shirt, and hair.

The "key" light could have been the directional light instead, or I could have used a dim ambient lighting. The reason I went with a spot, was so that I could narrow the beam to the head and upper body, letting the lower body fade into darkness. The key is only to provide enough light to make out the features, dimly.

Here is my 3 light setup:

I think its easier with the bald head. Also juggling between hdr settings and lighting choices can be a pain. Still I like the hdr effect. The key light is likely too bright but I wanted to see his face clearly.

edit: I moved the key off to the left to get more shadow on the right side of his face. Its not the dramatic effect I wanted but its nice.

That is quite nice!

It'd still work with the face fully lit, as well. In a brighter scene, you may need to use the light multiplier of the rim lights to make them brighter (set above 1.00). Like if you were doing back-lighting from the sun outside.

The lights could be linked to the avatar's root for back-lit animations too!

There are plenty of variables to play with, that's for sure! I'm sure the number of variables will increase a bit as well.

The number of tricks you can play with lighting and surfaces is pretty amazing.

I started working on a portrait shot last night similar to yours Rampa. The specular settings is a good tip particularly for hair (not so much for a sweater). I might post it tonight after work if I get a chance.

Something I would like to work on and see is special effects ie: Explosions. Is Iclone capable of pulling off an effective explosion with the base content or do I need to resort to buying effects or using an external program (hitfilm)? Working on a carwreck w/ explosion. Also going to need gunshot squibs for an upcoming scene. Anyone interested in the challenge?

Heres my portrait attempt. Not bad I suppose. I upped the specular on his hair, used three spotlights and one directional light.