hborre: Yeah, i tested out the half room with both IDL and IBL. Even though with the same HDR file attached to them brings similar results, the IBL does wash out shadows whereas the IDL gives some very nice, realistic ones with the 2 lights i added for the room. This is easily becoming one of my preferred setups, because not only does it give me full control and brightens the scene well, but i can leave gamma correction ticked off. GC is something i've learning to hate very quickly =P Thanks for all your help man. I learned a lot from this thread. I'm curious, do you usually render with Gamma correction on? I used to always leave it ticked on before, but now i prefer to leave it ticked off since it tends to make images look flat and dull, killing highlights and shadows.

Miss Nancy: Yeah, lighting has a very high learning curve, and there isn't one comprehensive tutorial out there that explains them all in detail. I had to use multiple tutorials and the advice of other people to finally understand lighting. I pretty much understand IBL, HDRI, AO, shadow-map vs raytrace pretty well now, the only thing i had to learn was how to use IDL. And with the help of you guys, i have a good understanding of it now =)