Here is a room I made years ago that I thought I’d try with indirect lighting. No idea how long it took (I was rendering in max as well on the same machine) and I’m well aware the mesh is poor but hey, it’s a test after all.
One spot outside and two gentle ceiling spots on the books.
~Glenn
I haven’t really played around with indirect lighting at all, is it supposed to be GI or is it some kind of ‘cheat’ like AO is to get a sort of GI look in your renders.
I am a bit confused because if it is GI than isn’t that area around the stack of books too dark. The top book is brightly lit but after the fourth book in the stack I can’t really see anything I would expect some bounce light from the floor to brighten things up.
the indirect lighting is a fake GI.
basically, it’s AO hacked to take the color and brightness of the surroundings into account.
the contrast is right, but personally, I would make it quite a lot brighter.
more like http://www.pasteall.org/pic/1989
the scene is cool.
Is it raytraced or approximate? Nice scene, I like the mood (with the darkness)
It’s ray traced. The scene is from a short I was working on years ago in 3DS. Here is the linke with some of the original renders. http://www.glennmelenhorst.com/Adelaide/adelaide.html
Hi, great work, I can’t get raytraced to work on Alpha 2, are you using a GraphicAll build?
edit:
I looked at your site and I must say you have some awesome work done so far. Lookin’ forward to your film.
A GraphicAll build. I can’t find it there but the link was here on the forums under an indirect lighting thread.
Ta, but the film is dead. Too much work in too little time I’m afraid. 
~Glenn
If the “Color Management” box was checked in Blender, it would already look more realistic. That said, the “dark and dramatic” look is probably a design choice in the case of Adelaide. Nice work on the film BTW. It looked promising.
and, who said it wasn’t? 
Seeing Blender Internal do things it couldn’t do before is so cool.
Thanks for the render.
take care
It was, I was going for the dark and gloomy look. 
Basically I was trying to match some of the feel of a Vray render I did in Max ages ago…
Ta. I’m just using this scene as a testbed for the indirect renerer, I have no plans to do anything with it.
~Glenn
You did well, then. It does look dark and gloomy.