CubanSphere
The CubanSphere recipe moves the camera in orbit around a cube and a sphere. The name "Cuban Sphere" is a silly pun on the words "cube and sphere".
Above, PBRT rendered the scene.
Above, Mitsuba rendered the scene.
The parent scene contains a cube and a sphere illuminated by several lights of different emission spectra. The cube and sphere are manipulated to use a shiny plastic material. Note that PBRT and Mitsuba use different microfacet models, so their "plastic" materials don't exactly match. The mismatch is most evident in specular highlights.
Over many conditions, the camera is manipulated to orbits the two shapes in a broad circle. The effective illumination changes between conditions because as the camera moves different lights come into play.
The lighting also changes in a contrived way: for the first half of the camera's orbit (images on the left side of the montage) a bright white light shines from above. For the second half (images on the right side of the montage) this light is dimmed.
The executive script MakeCubanSphere.m produced the images above. It is located at here:
(path-to-RenderToolbox3)/ExampleScenes/CubanSphere/MakeCubanSphere.m
CubanSphereTextured is a variant of the CubanSphere recipe that wraps an image texture around the sphere. Instead of plastic, the sphere uses a matte material with diffuse reflectance taken from an image of the earth.
The executive script MakeCubanSphereTextured.m produces the variant images below.
Above, PBRT rendered the scene.
Above, Mitsuba rendered the scene.