Some of this may be old news to people, but I don't recall seeing details about this here.  I hope I'm not pointing out something terribly obvious with this.  I have come to find out that Poser 7's default lights act very differently from lights created by pulling down the Object menu and selecting Create Light.  Follows are some render settings that illustrate this.

Looking at all the above, I am suspicious that created lights actually put out triple the total light that a default light does (3 shader nodes all set to Intensity = 1).

I'm wondering if maybe it's got something to do with that shader node thingie which doesn't appear in any documentation that I've found yet. I really ought to do some experimenting with it I guess

I tried to make all settable parameters identical for this comparison.

Note that the 'original' light shows through the window, while the 'created'
light doesn't. 

The original lights also have different shadow camera names and controls, although it appears that only the names of the controls are changed. There is something totally screwy about the naming of new lights. If you delete an original light, the new lights inherit the old light's name (light 1, etc.), but the Shadow Cam doesn't. So after deleting Light 1 and Light 3, then creating two new lights, you have Lights 1 -3, but Shadow Cams 2, 4, and 5.

Lighting in P7 is so utterly hosed it's hardly worth complaining about. How this junk got past beta is beyond me. I just wasted a hour trying to find a version of BB's nostril glow fix that works for an old V2 figure. Hopeless. The methods don't work, and when you sort of have them kind of approximated, the result still has nostril glow. As near as I can tell, IBL casts light into all areas, even if the IBL map is set to cast only black light upward. So there is apparently no method that will control nostril glow if you have IBL lights -- even, it appears, if they are turned off.

Amazing.
M

ShadowCam naming is a bit bizarre I must admit - although I have managed to tame the dreaded nostril glow on V4 and V3 - I don't have a V2 to try it on but it does increase either the render time or the shadowmap rendering time considerably.  i'm more and more leaning towards using Vue to do the rendering though (that introduces a whole 'nother set of problems mind - looks like nothing is ever simple )

Here's another strange bit of information. I found that if I point a light directly up the nose of a figure, the nostril glow disappears !!!!! :blink:

now that is wierd

AO is quite good against nostril glow. Just add a Ambient Occlusion node to the nostril material.

... and be sure that at least one of your lights has Ambient Occlusion active, of course!

One white spotlight, no shadows, no AO settings anywhere...

PS, these current ones are with Poser 7 SR2. 

How ya like that BIG LAME POLY ARTIFACT.  Neat huh?

Hi pjz,

You tried to help me with my lights a few weeks back when they were shining through the walls of a building I was trying to use.

I feel your pain. Sorry I don't have any good suggestions, still to new at this.

  :-(

Phuz