Quote - LaurieA, you there? What are the material settings for purple glass and silver metal? And how did you change your light to sun/sky?

For purple glass, I'd use:

MakeNamedMaterial "yourmaterialnamehere" "string type" ["glass"]
"color Kr" [0.7 0.0 0.7]
"color Kt" [0.4 0.0 0.4]
"float index" [1.5]

you can play around with the red and blue colors there a little bit to get the color you like

Luxrender has a built-in silver metal you can use:

MakeNamedMaterial "yourmaterialnamehere" "string type" ["metal"]
"string name" ["silver"]
"float uroughness" [0.05]
"float vroughness" [0.05]

If you want to make a colored metal that's not built into Luxrender, then use a glossy string type with u and v roughness to control the blurriness of the reflections and high numbers in the "color Ks" red green and blue fields.

Change the u and v roughness to adjust for how blurry (or not) you want the reflections.

As for sun and sunsky, I just copy and past the attributes from the sample file that comes with luxrender ;o).

Laurie