I utterly hate lights with shadow maps greater than 1024. I almost always use 512 to 768 myself, and if I can go lower, I do. Use of the shadowcams is critical. They are there for a reason -- learning to use them can change a good render into a great one. I once purchased a light set from a store, and that one purchase made me avoid lightsets forever afterward excepting the ones at rdna. The reason? Shadowmaps of 10,000. That's not a typo. Ten Thousand. Commercial lightset. From a well respected merchant, no less! The point, though, is that lighting is NOT as hard as it is often made to seem -- but that there is a great deal that goes into it. Poser's light system is often condemned as bad and such -- but I've found that it can do all the stuff other schemes can do with typically fewer lights and equivalent results at a much lower rendering time. Poser lights are different. I hear them laughed at all the time, but I recall that they are made and designed by someone who might be a lousy biz person, but is a recognized leader in animation and 3d work for film -- bg films. Are they easy -- no. But they do force you to learn good lighting if you want to learn to use them -- and then you can take that into other programs and find yourself doing better work than the ones that simply press the global lighting button. The only thing I ask for in lighting is a point light. IT is the one absent feature in poser's lighting that I feel would make it rock, and would provide the final piece to making incredible lighting setups. But then, I did take stagecraft in school, so I have something at least in the background that lets me understand some of the aspects that are needed. And I'm crazy, too...

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)