When setting up the lighting of a scene, am never able to get more than 7 lights of any type to work.  Like for instance if you have a number of candles  spread out upon a number of tables, it seems that you should be able to have each candle produce its own small flame and shadows.  Using one light for the moon to light the main scene, individual scenes within the main scene should be able to lit by candles.  Is it possible to do this and how?  Or do I need to isolate each part of the scene and move a light to that section as the camera pans that area?

In Poser 5 and lower, you needed upwards of 20 lights or more  in most scenes to get adequate lighting.

With Poser 6 and IBL, that all changed!

In Poser 6 and up, you can have as many lights in the scene as you want, but only 8 of those lights will preview.  They will all render, but they won't show the approximate lighting in preview.  Please note that any lights in the scene that are turned off, count towards those 8 lights!

See this thread to learn how to make your own lights in Poser 6 and up

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

The links to RDNA are broken.  To get to the thread, look at the old link and take the numbers found at the end of it and paste them to this:

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?p=

Then the link will work.

But also be aware, the more lights in you scene, the more memory intensive your render becomes. 

Quote - But also be aware, the more lights in you scene, the more memory intensive your render becomes. 

Thanks for that! :)  I should have mentioned that.

With Poser 6 and up you only need 3 to 5 lights to get good lighting. Some like BaggingsBill can do it with 1 light, but I find I need 5 (1 IBL and 4 Infinite) lights to get a good lighted scene. Sometimes I will add a spot light or a point light too.

Perhaps you are noticing the light limit when in the preview and opengl rendering?

In that case its a limitation of the graphics card and openGL. Most cards are limited to 8 lights, sometimes to 16.

But thats only the preview. You can put in and render as many lights as you like. You just have to rely more on test renders and spot renders and less on the preview.

Why not give lights bulps and candles an ambient node???

And use One Normal light with IDL?

Thanks will give it a try again..  Will let you know when finished if was successful or not.

 This could be stating the obvious but just in case:

IDL is a good way to go if you have P8, vary the ambient value on each of the flame materials.
If its an animated scene use a noise node fed into the ambient value to vary the flame per frame.

Otherwise, you will need a point light per candle and set the fall off to a short distance. Again, if animated, a noise node fed into the light intensity value will make the candle light flicker.

Make sure your flame object is set to not cast a shadow. 

Ray Traced point lights or IDL they will both be  long renders but I bet it will look great!

For P8 point lights, there is no need to set a falloff, use the inverse square feature found at the bottom of the properties palette.