I was experimenting around with fake HDRI and I discovered a few things. Id like to know what you think. First, I have noticed that if you are just using the sun (which is one of the reasons for doing the fake HDRI), you STILL need to add decent ambience to your objects to get them to look right, otherwise the area on the objects not getting direct light are still to dark. Even if you turn up the reflections very high and use blurry reflections. In fact, the picture above has ambiences of 30 on the objects. I think 30 is high, YET, this is what I think the objects should look like with proper radiosity and ambience. I have the shadows turned down to 25, because I think that NO SHADOWS looks unnatural. This occurs even if your ldri map is very bright. I have experimented with several maps. The one above is a cloud map, and is neutral overall. If I use a dark hdri map, the objects look dark (obviously). A fake HDRI is the same as a sky in that your objects simply pick up the sky, or dome, or surrounding object, colors. The object on the right has specular halo at 225,225,225. The object on the left has specular haol set at 50,50,50. Blurry refelections are set. The object on the left has reflection at 45!!!!! and is diffuse, while the object on the right has reflections at 20 and is reflective. Object on left also has light bump map. Also, when you use the fake HDRI method (ldri map on a non shadowing sphere so that the sun shows through), your object picks up the ground or table or floor just as much as they pick up the surrounding sphere. SO, if you use a dark floor, you DONT get enough bottom light. That is why I tried to use a neutral floor (overall grey). A white floor ,or no floor would be best. I guess my point is that I think you still need to use other lights. I hope that in Bryce 7 (since Bryce 6 will never happen) they have a single button that just says "perfect radiosity, ambience, lighting, and shadows" Lastly, and so as not to start another new thread, when I set soft shadows in premium rendering and click in the button on the sky lab, I still do not get soft shadows and when I reopen the sky lab, soft shadows has now turned itself off. Whats the deal??. I still get soft shadows with supplementary lights. comments??