Hi Chipp! Thanks for the suggestion - and the great example. Lot of value on your site! (Google his cool 'AltTerrain Builder' folks).

No i didn't use it, the help indicated that 'Indirect skylighting' was very compute intensive and not usually much better. But i'll give it a try now.

Some amount of light reflected off the shelves (depending on their material settings) is realistic, IMO - but i certainly had way too much in my first posted image.

I would warn against the other checkbox, 'Indirect reflections', if you have any reflecting surfaces, like my glass tabletop. I got severe "speckled" artifacts from that - reflection of sun outside, i think.

Help sez: "This results in typical caustic patterns around reflective objects at the cost of a lot of additional processing. It is usually recommended that you disable this option, as the results it produces are useful only under very special circumstances."

_ jc...'Art Head Start' e-book
.......Art Head Start.com site Art skills for digital artists. Free lighting chapter, tutorials.