Zanzo; A good book to hunt up is '(Digital)Lighting and Rendering, 2nd edition, by Jeremy Birn. Birn is a lighting technical director at Pixar, and the book covers concepts and cheats from an industry perspective (what works, not what may be physically correct). It's mostly application neutral, and when it isn't he tells you so. And there are lots of tricks you see in passing that really can help.Just as an example, the way that a table lamp tends to get rigged in CG. There is a point light placed in the shade, but only to provide backlighting -for- the shade. Then you place two spotlights in there as well, one aimed up, one down, and =these= provide the light cones you get from a shaded lamp. This way you have total control over the brightness and spread of the light cones from the shade, and the point light can be backed down to prevent washing out the detail on the shade itself. Shadows cover a multitude of sins, and learning how to place and finess them is always worth the effort. Edit: Having seen your newer versions (and the fact that the bulb is visible through the lampshade), you can see how that little lighting trick would be useful in situation....