I'm rendering a artist's studio that has sunlight coming in from the glass
roof.  Leaving that as the only light source and cranking up the ambiant on
the contents of the room doesn't look real at all.

Putting a fill light off to one side makes shapes look better (not "flat")
but adds shadows that are wrong.

Putting a large area light to one side looks great, for the major elements
of the scene.  Objects don't cast distinct shadows from this light source
but do show the vague darkening on the floor and close walls that we see in
a real room full of ambient light.  The =illumination= is still a point, not
a large surface, but it looks fine in this case.

However, I'm still getting stray shadows.  I got a sharp shadow from a small
object onto a nearby flat surface, which I presumed was because the
"adaptive" fails when the object is smaller than the light.  Hmm, on second
thought that's not right at all, as this would make =no= shadow (all four
corners of the light are unblocked when the object is in the middle), not a
sharp shadow with no prenumbra.

I tried turning off adaptive, and I still get a sharp shadow, even though
there are 25 sublights.  I'm trying a much larger number of sublights now,
but it's taking a long time to render.  If that shows no change, I don't
understand what's happening.

Anyway, I found that the "darkening" effect does a great deal toward making
a room look real.  If this isn't the best way to acheive that in an ambient
light situation, what is?  Would radiosity be the answer here, or does it
not help with this effect?

--John

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