Quote - There is no "put a point light here" and "put a spotlight there" that will work. Lights should reflect what is in your scene.

I disagree with this. Where lights are put in a scene does effect how they will render. I've once placed spot lights too close and ended up with a fully dark blacked out scene, but then when pulled out that effect is gone.I'm assuming it has a lot to do with how the pre-set lights were made. I remember buying a set of Spot lights and they were all facing way down toward the floor. So once I clicked rendered, my scene was totally black. Point lights are usually used on things like candles, lamps, etc.

Also where lights are place can have an effect on where the shadows will appear too. So it definately does matter where the lights are.

 I've bought a few IBL's off Runtime DNA and they look fantastic. Though you're right about how often the brightness can be jacked up too high. Some are also guilty of being too low to where you can't see anything.  I only ask these questions because I'm just interested to know how the lights work. Never mind telling me that the lights have to reflect lighting in real life. I once asked a guy about that and the dude wrote me a 1000 page essay about it and I swear I was lost on lighting.

Unfortunately someone also told me that graphic cards have no effect on how the scene will render. It will only effect the preview. Not sure how true that is, but I do recall asking someone about whether or not graphic cards will improve the render when it comes down to Poser's firefly that is. Granted someone also said something about scifi and Photo-real. I guess I didn't explain that well enough. When I said Photo-Real, I was talking about how 3D art has that realistic effect. So the theme whether it's sci fi, Horror, etc. Doesn't really matter. Usually I just say "A Realistic effect" or I'll use an example like Final Fantasy Advent Children which has a Photo-Realistic art style have a solid realism look and feel. I never quite understood what the hell people meant by Photo-Real. I just took the concept of "Real" and figured they meant realism to where the art looks and reflects reality itself to where everything in the scene looks like it was actually taken by a real camera rather than rendered by a computer.

Whatever the case, I'll take what little advice I've recieved from here and see what I can do. I guess these days I'm just not very patient enough to do a lot of work for results since time is not my best friend. And I still haven't a clue with post working techniques in Photoshop. I know it does take a lot of steps though for that type of thing. But I like to cut down on certain things. I spend a lot more time writing stories for my art versus all the other stuff. I will take a look around everyone's gallery that replied to me on here. I am not that active here anymore.

I've also spent money on much more priceri things than a new Renderer. Last time Reality 3 was $19.99 yet Stonemasons environments cost close to $40.00 a piece. Because of that alone, I simply don't even bother buying his environments. A lot of work went into them. But goddamn their extremely expensive compared to other rooms I've bought that looked just as good. For instance Ironman she makes very damn good environments, yet their very cheap and can still get the same quality that StoneMason environments get. Even a building by itself can cost you a lot if it's made by Mason. I remember him selling a cool Mech I wanted, the thing was $30 lol. But he does make some really neat Sci Fi rooms I'll give him that. I own at least two of them including one jungle outdoor enviromment I got from him that was $30.

Thank you everyone.