Nancy - thanks for the description of cages script. In answer to your Q's what I'm thinking is neon style lighting would be the best way as visually it looks better. But any object that could act as a light would be fine. As for your thoughts about emitter "burn out", not sure about 3D/poser, but in photographic terms theres various factors... Obviously the exposure time and aperture because it's a camera. But also things like the intensity of the object emitting light. How other lights in the scene might impact the emitting light. Type of lighting as well. Angle can sometimes also play a part as well. Take for example the "eye glass" in the image below. Thats actually a sandwich of 3 bits of coloured binder plastic along with the top of a pringles can. It's made like that because just using coloured plastic alone caused burn out, so I used the pringles top as thats semi-opaque. To further reduce the burn I also used a small door-bell light as that had a cover over some LED which gave a more wider diffuse light. Even then it took me quite a few shots to get the time V exposure balance just right. Think this one might have some light painting exposure comp on top of full manual shutter/aperture/ISO as well.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.