Texture and lighting confusion
 

Hello all. First off, hi, I'm new to the site. I've worked briefly in Maya before, and I now have Maya at home and love it! I also use Bryce and Photoshop.

NOW THEN! On to the question;

I started with a very simple small-and-cute character from a kid's game that I would try to model. I got it to turn out fairly well, and I went about texturing. I was in perspective view using Maya's natural lighting, and I tweaked with the texturing until it looked how I wanted it. However, when I went to do a render, it rendered totally washed out! It was like someone had put a dozen football stadium lights in front of it. It was really really white and bright. Yet when I hit 7 or 8 or whichever it is to view the lighting mode thing, its TOO dark. Its only in the perspective's lighting that it looks right.

Any ideas?