First of all, please feel free to tell me, "get a life already!" Lighting used to always bite me in the butt in dark scenes. Eric Winemiller from Digital Carver's Guild shared this tip with me in this forum somtime back. Add dark blue lights to illuminate dark areas in a scene unless you actually want them to disappear. (Think of night scenes in movies) I'm not saying that image above is right for your scene DB but here is the technique: add a distant light (or 2) with shadows turned off and color set to deep blue. In the above scene the strenght of the light is 160%. Also, I've got a dark blue ambiant light. That way it emphasises textures and still reveals the dark areas while the viewer still interprets the scene as 'dark'. The bright warm lights in the scene over come the blue where they need to. You've got a great scene going so please ignore this if it's no use to you! Mark