First thing to do is get a handle on light levels. As soon as you start mucking with combinations, you start to lose track of what the overall levels are and it's easy to overdo the lighting.

So - I'd suggest getting my light meter and rendering simple scenes with various amounts of this and that and see what the light meter has to say about what conditions you created. If you see red in it, you are overlighting.

Second suggestion - indirect light in Poser is too amplified to be in balance with how we set up speculars. Try going into the D3D render firefly dialog (it's in the Python scripts menu under partners) and reduce the IDL intensity to less than half. I don't know what the optimal value is, but 1.0 is way too high. When you have surfaces close to each other (such as an armpit) you see the amplification as an unnatural glow in crevices. When you don't have such surfaces, you still have the possibility of too much light and you feel like it is washed out but can't put your finger on it. The light meter will clarify this situation in an unmistakable way.

 

As for what lights to use with the env sphere, that really depends on the world you're creating. If it's a bathroom with a small window, the env sphere will contribute very little and you should be using a point light for every virtual light bulb in the room. If the mirror has 4 60 watt light bulbs over it, for example, you should be using four point lights at low intensity - something like 25 to 50%.

 

For outdoor sun light, a single infinite light is almost always the most accurate way to light it. But the intensity and color still vary based on situation. On an overcast day, the infinite should be muted (70%?) and have a wide shadow because the clouds are diffusing the sun's light. If it's beach day in the bahamas, I might set the sun to 130% and shadow blur radius should be exactly .5.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)