those are ALL of my lights in that scene which I last rendered just before.  Is this what you thought I was doing wrong or is the problem something else?

Reflect_Lite_Mult is in your prop shaders, not the lights. The same place that has the Reflect node in it.

 I've got a lot of props in my scene. Is this something I have to adjust for each one?

Sorry Esther, your screencaps are way too small when I open into a new window.  There is more shadow detail in that last render improving the scene a bit.  But I still agree with Isao, there is still too much light.  Personally, I would delete all lights, introduce 1 point to begin and set it for inverse square falloff.  Then I would allow IDL to manage the rest of the lighting.  Add non-shadow fill lights as needed.

In such a confined space, IBL and infinite may just be too overpowering to get a relatively decent illumination.  Usually those are techniques best reserved for outdoor lighting, IMHO.

 is it still confined when you consider I removed the ceiling of the room?

 what sort of lights are the fill lights?  Point lights?

 the scene is also missing some walls to make room for cameras.

Spotlights would be your fill lighting, they have direction and can be restricted.  However, to use them correctly, you may need to turn off cast shadows on the fixtures. 

In regards to the ceiling, if I were considering IDL, I would make it visible again, position a point light high and centered within the room and render.  Just imagine your own kitchen where your light fixture would be located.  That is as close to real lighting as you would get unless you are accounting for extra outdoor lighting coming in through a window off scene.

 inverse square makes the scene completely black in preview.  Is this the expected thing to happen?

Increase it's intensity if it is too low.  IIRC, the preview will darken but you should still something.  Unless your point light is accidentally outside your room.

 you mean have the intensity above 100%??

Could you replace the spot with a point light and apply the same inverse square falloff?  Raise it higher within your scene to just below the ceiling and render with IDL.  You may need to adjust the intensity. I'm finding the spotlight too restrictive for where it is.

I have created a new improved light meter. (I did one long ago - this one is much better.)

Get it here.

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/file-cabinet/BBLightMeter.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Put it in your scene.

Show me what it renders.

The center measures diffuse illumination. The ring measures specular illumination.

It produces a pattern of dots. The bigger dots indicate an area or direction where there is more light. Smaller dots mean less light. When the illumination is well below 50%, the small dots turn gray. Larger dots are white. If the dots grow so big that they overlap, it turns yellow. Yellow means you're within 5% of too much light. If you're over the maximum illumination you should be using for a proper exposure, then it turns red.

This render is what it looks like with slightly too much light, both diffuse and specular. We get some red areas.

gape you can do that? actually have materials react to light.....?
okaaaay.... that's a useful tool...!

Observe, however, that M4 doesn't look too bad. That's because he has VSS shaders on him. My VSS shaders are very tolerant of over exposure. Most shaders are not. If this was not using VSS, there would be serious yellow bloom on the skin.

Note I'm rendering with gamma correction. Without GC, this render would look bad. If you're not using GC, this level of lighitng will make you start adding lights for no reason.

This light level is fine. Learn to use GC.

Notice the figure and wall have changed, but the prop has not. The prop is not affected by GC. It measures illumination, not rendered reflected luminance. It is a predictor of how things will look. It does not actually look like those things.

This is important. Bad shaders can confuse you and cause you to mess with lights when you should not. Use the meter to find the lighting level you should be at. Then adjust shaders.

The light meter establishes a standard. Use it.

The diffuse and specular are not in balance. The diffuse (center) is showing big white dots and some red, while the specular rim is fine.

Here I have two overlapping spot light cones.

This lighting is OK, not too bright.

By bringing these two lights closer together, I've changed the total illumination they produce in the overlapping area. I'm not pushing just a little too much - I can tell because the specular ring is red, and the diffuse center is yellow. I should decrease one (or both) of the light intensities for best results.

I am no longer clipping the wall luminance (overexposing).

The BBLightMeter is invisible to raytracing and does not cast a shadow, so it will not influence your lighting at all, or show up in reflections. It will just meter.

This shader is more traditional and will not tolerate overexposure.

This is at what I consider the limit of illumination, and the meter agrees.

Again - my shaders don't do this. But unless you're going to put my shaders on every single object, you're going to get this when you use too much light.

This is with render GC on.

This is because GC tends to balance things better, and decrease the effect of clipping.

If you don't render with GC, then you see stuff like this. The parts facing away from the lights are way too dark. The parts facing the light are clipping. This is where traditional Poser users start adding fill and side lights, and end up with 10 or more lights for a simple portrait.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The reason for the yellow bloom is simple. In skin, of RGB, Red is brightest. As you raise the illumination, it hits the 255 limit first, and stops going up any more. But green and blue keep going up because they are not as bright as the red component in skin. The green rises to meet the clipped red, and you get yellow.

I'm poking around in my runtimes at random here.

This is from Poser Pro, IBL Ambient Occlusion, Road and Sky.

WRONG! Terrible. Ugh.

Where's the specular? And nearly the entire diffuse is over lit.

The specular is good, but the diffuse is ridiculous.

This looks soo much better.

I didn't have to touch the specular-only lights because the meter said they were fine.

I'll pause now - I think I've demo'd enough.

Show me your light sets and meter readings.

Nice... I've been using your light meter for ages. I included a five-ball version as a prop in one of my gallery images, and asked viewers to guess what it was. Someone guessed juggling balls, someone else guessed another kind of toy, for adults...

This improved version is brilliant... thanks!

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!!!!  Another winner from the mind of BB!

This is my default lab/studio light set, based on bb's soft studio lighting. One IDL emitter panel parented to a mainly specular ISF spotlight (front right), one fill reflector (just visible on left), one diffuse+specular rim ISF spotlight (back left), plus the EnvSphere loaded with my VGS (Versatile Gradient Shader, of course!) set to 100% intensity and 50% saturation.

I also have a desaturated 50% intensity HDRI IBL in the lightset, but it remains switched off except for preview illumination and non-IDL draft renders.

My test props here are plain white 0.8 diffuse and 0.2 specular. There are nasty artifacts on them, but the lighting levels are pretty good. Anything closer to the IDL emitter and ISF specular spot would be well overcooked - that much is quite clear from the top right lightmeter.

EDIT: by the way, the sphere is not just a test prop but also acts as a (usually invisible) light target. It's part of my default scene, with the two spotlights (and the IDL panel) already pointed at it.

Great demo, IsaoShi. And it confirms why that light setup is a good one.

Quote - Just for illustration...

This is my default lab/studio light set, based on bb's soft studio lighting. One IDL emitter panel parented to a mainly specular ISF spotlight (front right), one fill reflector (just visible on left), one diffuse+specular rim ISF spotlight (back left), plus the EnvSphere loaded with my VGS (Versatile Gradient Shader, of course!) set to 100% intensity and 50% saturation.

I also have a desaturated 50% intensity HDRI IBL in the lightset, but it remains switched off except for preview illumination and non-IDL draft renders.

My test props here are plain white 0.8 diffuse and 0.2 specular. There are nasty artifacts on them, but the lighting levels are pretty good. Anything closer to the IDL emitter and ISF specular spot would be well overcooked - that much is quite clear from the top right lightmeter.

EDIT: by the way, the sphere is not just a test prop but also acts as a (usually invisible) light target. It's part of my default scene, with the two spotlights (and the IDL panel) already pointed at it.

I'd love to try that set up out!

you can just see the lightmeter near the boy's head

I really don't understand what you're doing about what you see. Even without the light meter, I can see that your light intensities in your last image are too low. So you need to raise them.

In the earlier images they were too high. You needed to lower them.

You've zoomed past the correct levels - too high, too low. The light meter should be used to help find the values that are just right.

Interior lighting is not complicated, but somehow you're managing to avoid the solution.

Here is a little interior I set up. There is only one point light, positioned near the ceiling, above the table. It is set for inverse linear falloff, and intensity 60%, color white. It has ray-traced shadows enabled.

I have IDL enabled and that is taking care of the ambient (bounced) lighting.

That's all there is to it.

Now a real room would probably have more than one light source, so I'd set up more than one light. But for a basic starting point, there isn't any more to do.

I put three light meters in - one high on the back wall, one on the floor, and one on the table. They show how the light varies in the room.

I made the probe so you can set up a similar light and you should get similar results. If you don't, then we'll examine why. It could be nutty shaders. That's why the light meter is important. Even if your objects don't reflect light correctly, you should get roughly similar results from the light meters, which establish a standard that we can all easily use to judge your light levels.

Also, you have Poser Pro 2010 - are you using the gamma correction feature at 2.2? If not, do so. It is impossible to display the rendered luminances correctly without it.

Quote -  I'm going to work now for next 4 days
see you later

you can just see the lightmeter near the boy's head

You should turn the light meter so that it is measuring the light that falls on the face.

The way you have it, it's measuring light coming from the right behind the camera.

Look at the alcove on the left. The wall there is facing away from the light! Yet it is lit reasonably well.

Notice the red dot in the middle. That is another point light I'm about to try. It is 65 inches from the floor, set to 30% intensity, and I'm setting it up to be slightly yellow, like a cheap lightbulb. We'll see how that looks.

ISF? Did I miss a discussion, or is this a feature of Poser Pro 2010?