I'm working around a few ideas for a picture-story (I suppose you could call it a comic-book, too, but that feels a little wrong to me). Obviously, I need some sort of script. But the rough outline I have so far comes up with a few problems. 1: I need a background and envirnment with a bit more variation that the DAZ ones provide. The Millenium Environment does have a layered backdrop, but the various DAZ texture sets don't take advantage of it. Putting the sky, distant mountains, and near-horizon onto the same texture can really make things hard to vary. 2: A couple of important scenes are at night. Rural night, which is pretty black. Is there a good night-sky texture for something such as the RDNA Skydome? Or am I going to have to do things in post-production, maybe even shooting day-for-night. At least there are some bit about this for video, out on the net. I shall have to experiment. 3. Fire and explosions: I've done fires with pictures of flames on transmapped flat planes. I suppose there are particle effects that can be used (although I don't need animation). Any other ideas? I suppose part of the point of scripting this out is to try to limit the fancy stuff. Tank guns in the night could be spectacular, but how much effort will I waste trying to make something work that needs some expensive professional CGI solution?

Have you tried a mix between Poser, Terragen and PhotoShop? Take in mind movies like SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW or STAR WARS THE PHANTOM MENACE. If your background requirements exceed Poser try to take advantage of rendering in png or psd and changing alpha channel's plane colors with Terragen landscapes

I agree...Terragen (free) is wonderful for doing your own backdrops that can be adapted into the DAZ Cyclorama setting.  I believe they can also be worked up into the RDNA Infinity Cove.  All you need to do is take the picture you generated, cut it to fit the template or another background/floor from either of the other two, and apply it through the materials room.  I've had pretty good success doing this in the past.

For your outside elements to the story I'd recommend Vue!
Spectral skys and lighting in general far better than Poser can do [even 7].
There is a free version at the moment, not too sure on useage restrictions though!!

On a slightly different tack, it's worth noting that the rural night sky isn't actually that black - largely because the lack of light pollution allows more of the starlight to show itself. OF course, it depends on cloud cover and whatnot, but having lived in the sticks for a good few years now, I can tell you happily of times when I have walked down a road with no streetlights and seen my shadow stretch before me as clear as day, or night when looking up, there was almost more starlight than there was empty space between the stars.

JonTheCelt

Some suggestions:

Terragen: There's a free version, works well and is relatively easy to figure out.
Use a background image:  There are plenty in freestuff and tons of free stock images online
for fire:  Me personally, I've never had a great experience creating fire in poser, however i've had some success with bryce 5.   If neither works for your purposes, you can find free images of fires online and take them into a paint program and make brushes out of them to add to the scene later.   For lighting of fires (and you can try it in poser) in freestuff is "ultimate fire", i've had some minor success with it.

Hope that helps

I did do a tryout of day-for-night lighting. The idea I have is for one of the lead characters to be in the foreground, possibly looking away from camera, and the next frame would involve the use of a flamethrower. The set for this shot does need a fair bit of detail adding. Mostly I'm testing the lighting effects.

...and Bryce 5.5 is free from Daz, or Cnet...see posts above...not only do you get terrains....you get foliage..;) Terragen's good too...it's where I started out.

Also, should you want to do some modeling of buildings, objects, props, etc., there's Blender, Wings, both free...

Night shots often require low level fill lights to bring out detail.  Watch films with night scenes.  There are plenty of background/mood shots to let you know it's night but the acting sequences have a lot more light in them than real life. 

Don't know if this helps, from itchy animation: On the left, nighttime sky is deep blue with darkish terrain; on the right is a black sky with a bluish terrain, which is something you wouldn't see (on Earth).