Thank you, monkeycloud.

     It is important to distinguish between P8/PP2010 and P9/PP2012 as to technique.  P8 requires that the visible lamp be opaque, not cast shadows, and have raytracing disabled, plus the emitter must be hidden inside, which limits the surface area available to cast light.

     In P9, the visible gem/lamp can freely use transparency, refraction, SubSurface Scattering;  just un-tick casts shadows.  Another big improvement is that the emitter can be larger, outside of the visible gem - hidden in plain sight by merely un-ticking the visible in camera box, so that the emitter itself is unseen, but its cast light shows in the render.  The P9 Firefly IDL rendering is also faster than in P8.

     This equivalent PP2012 render took about one third the time to render, compared to the P8/PP2010 version.  Since I was able to scale the emitter up 250%, I was able to lower the ambient value and still cast as much light, and the light is distributed more evenly, so you have more leeway with render settings without getting splotchiness.

     .

     Because PP2012 has gamma correction, which tends to even out light levels and lighten the scene, I was able to reduce light 1 (moonlight) to half of its previous intensity, and shut light 3 (rim light) off completely.

     A rule of thumb regarding IDL emitters:  A bigger emitter, with more surface area, can use a lower ambient intensity, give as much light, and cast that light more evenly, than a smaller emitter.

Poser 12, in feet.  

OSes:  Win7Prox64, Win7Ultx64

Silo Pro 2.5.6 64bit, Vue Infinite 2014.7, Genetica 4.0 Studio, UV Mapper Pro, UV Layout Pro, PhotoImpact X3, GIF Animator 5