momo, it's not aboslutely necessary to use the script in vince's thread.  I posted a screenshot of reasonable render settings at the end of the other dummies thread.  those settings also cause reasonable values to be displayed in the script. both the render settings and the script set certain GIvariables in FFRender, prior to render.

Ambient occlusion (AO) is what previous versions of poser used to simulate the effects of indirect light bounces.  AO is disabled by poser 8 on any light settings when indirect light is enabled, but if anybody still has AO nodes on posersurfaces, those should be deleted.  due to these various complexities, it's not gonna be easy for everyone to understand at first.