I have a light inside a spacecraft object.  When I place this spacecraft next to another object - say a spacetation - the light inside the interior not only lights up there correctly but shines through the body of the spacecraft and onto the space station! 

I know there is another thread on this and I thought the problem could be solved simply by rendering shadows and making sure that the objects and lights are set to cast shadows. I am using a spot light.  I also have tried a point light but shadows only get rendered with ray trace I think on those and when I do I get weird shadow and light designs on the object nearest the space craft.

Is there not a setting either on render or on the lights that can force objects to cast natural shadows?  Light should not be passing through these....tks

fix it so that the interior materials of the spaceship are glowing, as there's
little sense in lighting the inside of it but rendering the outside of it (e.g. a
camera view including another spaceship).

Glowing - what would be the settings to make a mat glow other than turning up the ambient to 1.0?  Pretty good idea but I have had problems making things truly "glow" with a haze etc.....I like the idea though because I think it will cut render time and for this scene - the details won't matter as much. Tks & let me know about the "glow" setting....

this lighting problem doesn't get asked here very often, hence it may be instructive for ya to
post a firefly/raytraced render of the two spaceships.  spaceship 1contains a point lite and
spaceship 2 is near enuff to spaceship 1 to show the fx to which ya refer. raytraced shadows.