family room with lights

So after awhile fighting with the lighting I decided to go with the scene without using mental ray render and sticking with the default one.  The lights use ray traced shadows and I'm using the advanced light setting of Radiosity. Radiosity is a way of calculating indirect lighting.

I don't think it works as well as mental ray, but it renders a million times faster and still looks pretty good. An important thing about all rendering and light calculations is to remember dimensions. If your scene doesn't have realistic dimensions no advanced lighting solutions will have realistic lighting.