Place Specular Highlights

Updated 22nd January. The fifth beta (v0.9b) of a  tool using the Custom Tool SDK to interactively place specular highlights on objects is now available. The (updated for v0.9b) movie here shows what the tool can do.

The tool allows the  user to select any pre-existing light, lightroot or object in the scene and that object will be manipulated. If no light or object is selected a spotlight will be created. This means existing VRay and Arnold lights are now supported.

The main features of v0.9b are now:

• Place specular highlights from lights directly where you position cursor over an object.
• Place any object, not just lights, along the reflection vector.
• Place multiple objects simultaneously.
• Original distance(s) to incident point is/are retained.
• Distance to point can be manipulated with the Shift key.
• The cursor can be placed back on the 'specular' point by holding down Shift + CTRL.

v0.9b also introduced some significant performance enhancements to the underlying pick routines.
Source is included in the Addon (thanks to Piotrek Marczak, Steve Caron,  Reinhard Claus and Ahmidou Lyazidi for their invaluable contributions to this thread on sicommunity).

The Addon has been compiled against Softimage 2013 SP1 64bit only. The tool can be invoked using the command 'Application.SpecularPlaceTool()' or by using the menu items - Primitive:Light:Specular Place Tool or Transform:Specular Place Tool.

Version history:
Specular Place Tool v0.9b Addon