one thing a lot of people don't realize is that you don't light a scene in maya the way you would go about lighting a regular room... to create the nuances a normal light would create you would have to create several lights with several different settings (and light-linking!), OR you could just cheat and render with mental ray and final gather or those snorefest renderers maxwell or indigo (they take aeons to render a good looking still image, but the renders are pretty good).