Quick Shot 1: OOT Male Iray Lights

For 3DL, I used to like SaintFox's lights (you can probably find them in the store here), its been a while so I can't really make a lot of good recommendations for 3DL. Except Khory. Find her lights elsewhere, I don't think she brokers here.

For Iray, try OOT (outoftouch), jCade and Khory (you might find some oot lights in the store here)

It can be worth the effort. I hardly ever leave smart content anymore. I'd rather put in that effort for products I am going to use than to go hunting for them in my content library, where they could be anywhere

I believe that is the accepted depiction. I would not capitalize the repeated letter in a proper name.

Quick SHots 2 My Essential Toolbox

Interview with the Artist: Darwin's Mishap

Quick Shots 2.5 More Essential Tools

Elijah 7 Young Does Not Equal Short

Never set to 100% convergence.

You might find some elements of this article helpful: Dark is not the absence of light And my earlier article about lighting with Sun and Sky also applies somewhat (its linked in the above article).

You can ignore the bit about SubD and high resolution, its not your problem.

Your problem is that the image is large and there's likely not enough light here to get you what you want. Environment lighting is great, but its not always going to get you to where you need to be. I suggest adding some spotlights to your characters to give the engine more available light to play with.

There were no changes to lighting between 4.8 and 4.9.

Distant Lights should be, mostly, relegated to the trash bin of history.

An example of what you are trying to accomplish would help others to help you.

Dark is not the absence of light

A little something about tone mapping, a little something about using lights, a little something about 'dark' renders.

I was finally able to upload via Internet Explorer. Last night, it failed multiple times in Chrome and Opera and the File field was never populated no matter how many times I chose the file upload.

Thanks for looking into it. I have this vague deja vu that this has happened before....maybe I should have remembered to use IE.

I could be interested... I own lots of tools and have never learned to use them properly (Hexagon, Substance Suite, etc).

Allow me to withdraw and re-phrase. I am EXTREMELY interested in this proposition.

It's been a long time since I entered a contest here. Should be fun to see if things have improved.