open gl lighting?
 

how do u get a character to not be so dark when working in layout this is what my scene looks like and is very hard to work with.

Whilst posing your scene, switch the ambient lighting up to around 25 - 50%. This should blanket your scene with light. Alternatively, drop in a distant light and rotate it until you get reasonable lighting conditions.

Just remember to remove them before starting you lighting rig setup.

hey thanx man!!!!!! u know that is such an easy answer:) sometimes i just need someone to hit me upside the head with some good info!!!! that fixes that problem is fixed now. all i need to figure out is to get IK working on the arms of my character I guess i am running into some problems with phill's tutorial

or you can select that distant light, hit "p" and uncheck both affect specular and affect diffuse, this way the light will still brighten up your OpenGL view but it won't mess with your render.

Lights
 

Also if you have more than one light - LW is set to accept one open GL by default you can increase this up to 8 in the display properties ( d ) and if you have multiple lights in a scene it will let you see their influences better.

might help -