I'm having a truly awful time trying to get the lighting on this scene right. Being a relative beginner at this, I could really use some of your expert help :) What I had in mind was sort of a misty morning atmosphere with sunlight piercing through the leafy canopy.

Two problems: when I use a volumetric quadratic spotlight to simulate sunlight coming through the leaves, it washes the scene out. This problem is also worsened when I increase fog/haze.

In trying to light the unicorn in the center of the image, it looks like someone drove up in their car and turned their headlights on high. When I tone down the power of the lights, the unicorn is way too dark.

Thanks for your feedback!

I'm not one of the advanced users here, but I've been playing with using volumetric lights for fog-like effects for the first time recently. I've been using point lights, not quad spots, and have set the intensity very low, sometimes as low as 1%. If your lights are too bright or too close to the scene, they will indeed give that awful washed-out look. Besides that, you might try using "choose tracked object" to help control direction. Also try playing around with lens flare effects. Softly defined rays can really add to those foggy or light through plants and windows effects. Again, there are probably others here who can help better than I, but I wish you luck with this. You have a very pretty scene in the works, there.

First thing to try - edit your atmosphere and set your sunlight settings to 'no ambiant' values (that is, maximum setting to light from sun and from sky). Once that is set, place a few spotlights with no shadow and low intensity around your scene to simulate multiple ways your light shines onto the unicorn. For example, one light can be coming from behind the trees on the left, one from the right in front of the unicorn, one from the sides... It is a difficult scene to light since it is set in a dark atmosphere and rainy day. One would expect a dark result - this is why it looks like a car is parked in front of the unicorn with headlights on. Think about additional light sources to enhance the scene. Glowing mushrooms ? shiny fireflies ?

Attached Link: http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

Another suggestion would be to look around on image search engines (like google) for images of rainy days and see how the lighting of these images comes across.

Attached Link: http://www.warpedspace.org/lightingT/part1.htm

Thank you for the suggestions! I'll give them a try this evening :)

see also the ngalai tutorial in backroom ...

Nice... it does look better. A couple of comments maybe : - the unicorn looks like it is floating above the ground. You should try turning on casting shadows for the light above the unicorn. - in atmosphere editor, try playing with exposure. It is a great way to enhance contrast on an image directly within Vue.

Thanks Agiel! I'll definitely give those suggestions a try. Moving on from lighting questions... Do you think a soft focus would help make this look a little more dream-like? Or would it just muddy up an already cluttered picture (I guess it could't hurt to try). And do you think there should be more vegetation in the foreground?

The vegetation in the foreground looks fine for me. A soft focus takes a lot of time to master (most of the time, it ends up looking like a close up picture of a small model). I would rather try some Photoshop effects if you want a more 'dream like' atmosphere.

I see that the leaves are casting shadows on the unicorn so you may need to check the material setting for the unicorn to make sure that it imported from Poser casting shadows. Other then that, this is a very nice composition. Just make sure to anti-alias your final render.