Hand-painted HDR skies

I was looking around on the net for resources on painted HDR probes- ones that didnt involve photography, or photomerging or what have you.
After some experimentation, I found it was pretty simple to just switch to 32 bit more in photoshop and paint values manually, using the 4-point perspective trick I mentioned in an ealier blog post.

So heres the map I made;

and heres a simplistic test render;

Aside from adding a shadow caster ( which you can see in that chrome balls reflection) This test worked as I had hoped, and opens up new possibilities for lighting in the future.

I'll be doing some tweaks if I carry this through to any real renders-
>seperating out the sun for better control over the directional light
>adding way more detail, in perspective, for pretty specular stuff
>maybe rendering out maya scenes as HDRs as a base for paintovers in Photoshop

In conclusion, I hope I get a chance to do a big n' beautiful picture using this technique in the future.