...so I am trying to creating a mirrored tunnel... basically a hollowed out, elongated rectangle with all sides textured with a mirrored shader. The camera perspective is just inside one end of the "tunnel". I want to place objects inside to have multiple reflections within the tunnel. However, even if I place a ton of lights inside the tunnel, everything looks dull, and reflections are crap. I understand that a mirror shader is gonna look basically black unless it has a lightsource and objects to reflect (well, black if you have a black working background...lol). But why would it look so dull when I have lights inside the tunnel? I am using a mirror shader that comes with Carrara I think, or maybe one of Clint's from his free shader pack - both of which should be good mirrors - but still it looks like crap. Any suggestions? I will try to place a pic up tonite (I am at work right now) to show you what I mean... HG...

On the shader tree for refect put In value and increase that value, try that and see how It goes.

Hi HG, In the Scene Settings, set Background to White and set Backdrop to Black. Place your lights outside the tube with their Shadows set to none to avoid 'hotspots'. Mark

Maybe too late a comment, but check that your lights are not physically larger than the tunnel's interior. I've had something like that happen in RDS; might be a problem in Carrara, too....