How to light an indoor scene containing multiple characters(DAZ 3D)? Any tips for a newbie?

[Redhunter357]

Here's some quick scenes I did with differant lightning methods. Can you tell me which scenes you think atleast okay?

Two spot lights and a HDRI.



No spot lights but with a good HDRI suitable for model lightning .


Now for a full scenes with differant lightning methods.


A good indoor HDRI with culling camera (Iray section plane), a couple of ghost lights and just ceiling lights.



6 spot lights and ceiling lights, no ghost lights and no culling camera for hdri to penetrate the scene .



just 2 spot lights at distant and higher amount of ceiling lights to light the scene, no hdri culling camera.




I just have no idea how different daz3d users light their scenes or this methods i'm using to light my scenes are the right way to go or not? So I'm going to need some advise from the audience to get myself to the right path.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[lcp]

It might be a matter of taste, but your renders leave almost no trace of a shadow. Thats very good for having short render time but looks flat and boring to me.
I go for realism and therefore a dynamic lighting. A dynamic image goes from deep black up to glowing white pixels using the whole range of luminance.. Which is hard to do with Daz alone. You'll need some postwork to clear grain because Daz doesn't like dark.