what are your tricks when it comes to lights? 

-sometimes when i use a bright IBL i also add a light with only specular. that way i have 3 lgihts. one direct light +IBL + specular only to fill in some parts that were missing specular.
-i use Olivers IBL image gels.
-i also a lot of times use AO for fake ambient light.
-blury ractraced shadows looks very much like noise. even with good settings. i found out by using Bagginsbills lights that if you use a bright IBL you dont see the noise. because they are so bright.
-for DM shadows i always change the shadow cam.

what are your tricks? 

Hi

I think all depend of your scene ...

I then delete all subject matter and save as a PZ3.. "!_White_lightset.pz3" and put it where I can find it.

Having lights parented to a box is great for quick adjustments... just grab the box and lift or "Yrot"...etc. Cool in animation...disco baby.. (not really..)

Bookmark.

richardson, I think you can change the suffix of that .pz3 to .cr2 and place it in your Figure Library for quick access.

Props??? 

Quote - I have a box primitive that I parent or point my lights to. When I get a lightset that works,  I add or point a second box towards the camera (red box). This sets a stage to replicate the success as long as the point of interest is at the box's position...

I then delete all subject matter and save as a PZ3.. "!_White_lightset.pz3" and put it where I can find it.

Having lights parented to a box is great for quick adjustments... just grab the box and lift or "Yrot"...etc. Cool in animation...disco baby.. (not really..)

so when you move the box the light folows it? 

so when you move the box the light folows it?

Yep. It can get tricky with some lights.. Try it out.

i am still trying to make a light that has very wide specular.

sometimes you want to use lights that are like spot lights that have a very small specular. but for some area lighting you want soft and wide specular. like a window for example. if i make 3 or 4 spot lights that are very close together i can make a pretty good lighting that is like a window. but the specular looks wrong. very bad.

any new tips on that?

Specular size and behavior is a lot more easily controlled by the material the light falls on, not so much by the light itself.

but different lights have different chareteristics. if i chagne it in the material then it will be the same on all lights.

All kinds of lighting tips and tricks in the following thread

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2734086

i thought we would share more tricks acadia. thats why i opened this thread. to talk about lighting .

which kind of light is it,  or  what kind of light settings is it,  where you can actually "cast darkness" with the light.

I have tried  turning simple  spot lights  to  black color,  but that is not achieving  a darkening of the area  that the light hits.

you need type a negative number.

shadows only -lights

sometimes they use a trick to cast only a shadow. no lighting. so they position a light and make it cast only a shadow. they dont use 100% black shadows. sometiems you want to add a shadow somewhere but without the lighting  for a dramatic effect.
poser i think doesnt have an option to make only shadows.  but we can use negative lights.

so what we do is:
-we position a light that we like.
.we duplicate the light
-the first light is a positive number. the second light is the same number but negative. the second light doesnt have shadows.  the second light will take away the lighting but leave the shadow.

here i used one IBL and two lights.

Quote - but different lights have different chareteristics. if i chagne it in the material then it will be the same on all lights.

Exactly! This is why I want a Specular node with a pulldown for Choose Light: All, Main, Rim, Window etc.

interesting BB. do other software have this? 

so you would have more specular nodes? for example 5 specular nodes for 5 lights? 

i guess it is impossible to make the light appear bigger since in poser all lights are a point.

maybe we need specular from HDR? or specular on IBL?

CORNERS

sometimes you can notice in rooms that the corners from the walls are darker. thats because of how the light bounces around. with AO we can make it look better.
but with negative lights we have full control.

first make a spot light and turn of shadows. we dont need shadows because we will position the spot light direct in the corner . make the intensity negative. negative lighting. we want to make it darker and not brighter.

you can use negative lights even on figures. sometimes you have some part on the body to bright.

but its not good to use big numbers. -30 is pretty dark. i would use -5 or -10