As you can see in this quick render, I have a really dark room in this image. I have spent hours modeling furniture with bryce, but none of the detail shows up because of poor lighting. Of course I have also tried creating light sources, but they look like crap! Can any one help a bryce (or 3D graphic for that matter) newbie with an idiot proof way of lighting up my room? (Sorry about the lousy render, this alone took 30 minutes) Please help.

Tip number one when using Bryce: Learn patience. Decent renders take time. I know, I don't exactly like waiting myself. When Bryce is done, it should tell you with a nice little popup message (if the preferences are set for it.) Stopping it before then is like opening an oven on something that's only half baked. Also note that some settings in the skylab's atmospheric controls can effect rendering time by a HUGE factor.

Use some lights (in addition to the default sun.) Yes it will take longer, but it's worth it if the scenes seem too dim. They do involve tweaking to get good results, even the experts will tell you that. If realism is the desired result, lighting is usually what makes or breaks a scene. Sometimes when outdoors, I've found that lights help to fill in what is otherwise too dark. (This is sorta like using reflector screens in real photography.)

After that, you'll need to check your render settings. If your settings are off, then sometimes Bryce acts funny. Also make sure that the anti-aliasing is on. It gets rid of the blockyness.

Also I recommend getting a 2D program for use with Bryce if you don't have one already. Bryce isn't so great at exporting JPEGs, so using another program to turn Bryce bitmaps to 'pegs will yeild better results. Also it comes in handy to postwork images in order to doctor the results that are usually too technically challenging to achieve otherwise.

Dunno how much that helps... But that's my $0.02

Place a radial light where the light bulb would be in your table lamp. With this new light selected, go to Edit/Object on the drop down menu on the bar at the top of the screen. Adjust the intensity of the light until you're satisfied with the lighting in the scene. Hope this helps.

thanks for the ideas!! Ihave tried using radial lights (even in my lamp shade), but they don't have a very realistic result. Any more Ideas???

There is no sure proof way to set up lighting, every scene is different and requires different lighting approaches. ( welcome to the world of 3D ) Lights need to be tweaked in the light lab ( E icon, when a light is selected ) Materials have to be tweaked to fit the lights ( M icon ) Even though it's an indoor scene the sky attributes need to be tweaked too. Looking at your scene the first thing I would say is the walls & floor have to much ambient value. Here's what I would do, first I would go into the sky lab and make sun/moon shadows set to 100% Then I would take the walls & floor into the material lab and make the diffused value 100% and ambient value 0%. Then I would start adding lights ( one at a time ) where I think the light sources should be coming from ( like the lamp ) and tweak them as I go. Once I felt comfortable with the lighting, I would start tweaking the materials to fit it. Of course this isn't a sure proof way ( other may do it differently ) but it is the approach I would take.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=316860&Start=1&Artist=Incarnadine&ByArtist=Ye

Radial lights can be very realistic. It just takes a bit of tweeking in the lightlab. I have two here just ever so slightly below the actual bulb locations in the sidetable lamps. I also use two square parallels set at about 5 and 15% edge softness for a slight fill. One is horizontal and if I remember right one vertical down. Shadows on those was set to very soft. Yes lighting takes patience, but it is one thing that can make or break a scene! It's worth investing the time. Good start by the way. keep at it. Richard

Also turn off or reduce the haze value in the sky lab, it looks like the room is picking up blue from the haze.

Maybe real ambience can help too. It has radiositiy-like capabilities wich can add more depth to objects in the shadow. The whole room is now in the shadow wich means that all the objects are lit by ambient light. Basic ambient light reduces all the detail and creates a lack of depth. You should add some lights inside the room. Diffuse light creates the depth you see in other scenes. Some tweaking of the textures might be needed to make the lighting look convincing.

Don't forget about the falloff settings. They influence the nature of your light source immensely. Try the different ones and see how they work.