Thanks to the both of you. Being a true newbie in lighting, I have been trying your method as to using mental ray. When I purchased Maya unlimited, it also came with a book which does include global illumination. However follow the tutorial in the book it describes that to get the best understandace of global illuminatiom, it is best to use comparisons of each render.

1. So doing so it first shows you to render without global illumination, and save that render. (see pic 1).

2. Then it tells you to turn on global illumination and save that image. (see pic 2)

3. Then the current render I am working on, is describing to change the photons intensity fromm 8000 to 120000. Though everything got washed out, and yet the picture in the book deosn't look like my picture. (see pic 3)

what am I doing wrong or is there a missprint considering that 120000 is a dramatic change?

pic 1



pic 2



pic 3