Shrugging man doesn't bother me as I have matmatic. I use Poser 8, so no AO for me, and IDL all the way.

 That'd be great, cobaltdream.

 Seems to have worked, thanks RV. I'll keep experimenting with different light setups to see how that performs.

 Notice how the specular is not pure white, but a brighter shade of the diffuse color. That's what I seek.

 Whenever someone says 'You're using Poser? You didn't make those models? You didn't paint those textures? That's not art!' I always reply, 'Tell that to a professional photographer. He didn't make his models, his scenery, his sun or moon.'

 That's Vanessa V4 texture, available at Daz. Works real well with VSS, I might add.

 Assassin Angel v4 and Vanessa v4 both at daz, and by the same person, are excellent. I don't use the face morphs but the textures look wonderful with VSS.

 Indeed it is two spheres, as he mentions in the first post of the glow sphere image, and the second sphere does have the turbulence effect.

Using these glow objects, you could create a great nightclub lighting scenario with the wide variety of light colors in clubs.

 Sweeet, now you can create fireballs for wizards and witches right within Poser!

 Well, that makes sense, actually, on both things, and now I understand why I was having trouble. Thanks! Now to await the tutorial scene and data mine it with glee.

 BB, I'm looking forward to your outdoor scene. For some reason blue skies negate the color of skin on my characters (I'm using VSS) so it's almost a bluish grey. Is there a way to stop that and still keep the sky to a daylight blue?

 Wonderful to hear. Excellent way of teaching us, I think.

 Very much looking forward to that, mostly for the materials. How's the render time with those reflective puddles?

 Color differences. Look for the graph bagginsbill posted. Tone mapping does not produce linear output like pure gamma correction. With gamma correction you won't need to tone map. You will be able to ungamma incoming textures and gamma correct renders to have a completely linear workflow.