I'd love to be able to render scenes straight away in Poser without going through the hassle of exporting. The rendering engine is terrific, but the lighting controls are terrible. Sure they're OK if you want to do head shots, but lighting a proper scene in a decent sized room setting is a nightmare. Shadows don't do what they should do based on the light setting. Props are on the floor, but there's a gap between them and where the shadows start. Huge blocks of dark area that should be well lit based on the light settings. I can light a room perfectly with the standard 3 light setup and a fourth added as a light source in the scene in Blender with no problem so I'm very frustrated with this. Am I missing something obvious? Anyone know of any good lighting tutorials or have any tips to offer?

Attached Link: http://www.3d-cc.com/thirdeyefunction/dl-welcome.htm

I know a good one that I use all the time, REMC has a global illumination tutorial on his site (link provided), it's a lot of work to start with but it's worth it. Rob

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl although I don't like the "it's a lot of work part." :O)

SnowSultan has a couple of Global Illumination light sets in freestuff, you might want to d/l them and have a look before you start making your own, see exactly how much work is involved, don't start if you've only got 10 minutes to spare is all I'll say ;) Rob

here's a quick render I did just now with 8 lights, it's taken me over a year to get anything really usable of my own, but then I haven't tried till recently, oh yeah a little tip, select the ground plane, click on object then properties & turn off cast shadows, it makes the other shadows look better. Rob

I tried your tip of turning off shadows for the ground plain, but they won't turn off for my machine, I can un-tick the box, but when I open properties again the box is still ticked??

now that is just too weird, it's doing the same on my machine now.

There are certain things in the ground plane that seem like default settings: make it visible, save the file, close it, open it again, and the plane is invisible again.

The solution that seems to be working is to use all spots and crank the angle start dial way up. Completely counterintuitive for 3D, but it has the desired effect with the standard 3 light setup. The thought of using 20+ lights in a scene looks like a nightmare to me. Oh by the way. I model and import all my architectural sets and the default ground plane is a nuisance. Can I get rid of it?

it can stay invisible, but you can't get rid of it totally mores the pity