Hello Guy,

That looks really nice! Cool that you liked my Repper tile.

As Cycles originally HAD to use emitting objects, that might just well be the method that works the best still. They went back and added the two light sources that you mentioned. Additionally, using a plane object for a lamp automatically makes for softer shadows and more realistic lights. (since no lights actually purely emit from a point source in real life, the light is more dispersed through one method or another)

Before there was Cycles, Andrew Price had already advised using area lamps.

Looks like you're doing well with the experimenting. Cycles has some quirks, but does a great job for the most part.

Re: The second node

I don't know if it was necessary, but since I had a second map, I used a second texture coordinates channel to have the UV to "explain" the second Image Texture.

Peace

James