How to do lighting for Luxus/Reality/Iray

PotatoHead

Bunch of prelude blabla : I've been getting stuck on lighting interior scenes for a bit. I had a chance to throw my stuff into Reality 2.50 and Luxus then render it into LuxRender, and tried out the new Iray render.

Everything renders fine, except I can't go back to frame 0 on Reality's Start Frame slider (which drove me crazy). I also noticed that Reality has a much more in-depth configuration of the surfaces and lighting. But I assume the same is possible in Luxus by adding the LuxRender properties to the lights, thought not sure if there is a similar thing for surfaces.

Anyway, problem is the lighting looks horrible.

One scene is indoors with simulated torches (a couple Linear Point lights with color) is way too bright, and tweaking it seems to just keep it as bright or make it go pitch black.

And an other using the Suite 2101 night sky, that one is pitch black in Reality, okay in Luxus but also pitch black in Iray.

Staying with the the Suite 2101 scene, I'dd like to turn off the lights and just have moonlight seep into to room (full moon, decent eye adaption, not pitch black).

Is there a methodological approach into setting up whatever light may be used for this (blue tinted distant light ?) and making it look rightish the first time around ? And what additional setup do I need to do in Reality/Luxus to have the light behave like it should.

I've done a bit of googling and I've found a few things, but mainly lighting packages.

Bonus question, how does Iray stand up to the LuxRender plugins ?

StratDragon

I use Reality so these are my Reality/LuxRender findings;

if it's an outdoor scene I use one distant light re-name it "Sun" change the camera to "Sun" point the "Sun" where I think it would be in the sky and render in LuxRender using Linear, Sensitivity 100, Exposure 1/125, F-Stop 1/16, Gamma 2.2
No sky dome, but I recommend a "ground" or "floor" so light can bounce off of it and look real.
While you can add mesh lights and other elements like a professional photo shoot I find the one light method quick to set up, quick to render, sold results. The settings used in LuxRender are known to photographers as the "Sunny 16 Rule", it's a very established way of shooting outdoor scenes.

If it's an indoor scene I use 3 point lighting (google it), I use mesh lights change the wattage to about 500 for the light facing the figure, 350 for the back and rim lights. If I have lamps or ceiling light "props" I knock those down to about 10 - 25 watts. In the Reality lights tab I check to see everything has it's own MeshGroup name and then I can tweak each individual light while the render is taking place in LuxRender using LuxRender's Light tab. Use LuxRender "Estimate Settings" and tweak from there.

If you are using Reality 2.5 and not 4 at this time you can use Called's light pack which is a great addition to Reality
http://www.sharecg.com/v/68284/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Reality-Light-System-for-DS-+-Reality-+-Luxrender