For some unknown reason I like doing the night scenes with the lanterns, candles etc.. I'm finally beginning to understand (hopefully) the lighting. Is there a way to give the impression that the flame is flickering. Or a tut you could point me to.   This is where I'm stuck at with this.

That may be difficult to convey since flickering is a change of light value over time.  Unless it is animated you are constrained to a single moment in time.

That said,  could you do something to soften that hard line shadow.  A flame is emitting light from its entire visible surface and not a a singular point.

You could try using some sort of gel with the light source.  It will be difficult, indeed.

Consider turning off cast shadow on the object that is causing the shadow as an experiment.  I really like the lighting along the book tops to the left.

Thanks Much skiwillgee.

I was thinking that a candle might cast a flickering shadow so I did a test with a candle in the kitchen.  As long as there's no air to move the flame it looks pretty much like the lighting in the image.  Guess I was thinking sort of wrong. LOL . It did make hard shadows, a little sharper then the image ones, so I guess I'll just leave this alone.  

Kudos for you to be thorough enough to light a candle and observe it in the real world.  Observation like that will surely show in your art. 

Attached Link: http://www.baument.com/restore/Tutorials/flameon.html

Try this, my fire material isn't suited for candles, but this should work for ya:-)

Clay

Thanks Much for the link Clay.  I discovered right away that your fire didn't work. I use it a lot so it's the first one I tried. I ended up using one of the materials that came with Bryce but it's not showing up very good.  I'll try that tutorial tomorrow. Maybe I'll get lucky & get it right the first time..LOL ..