Fenes,
Well, the Poser's a pretty poor renderer, with Vue and other apps you can use Radiosity and other settings which give better realism...but, they take a lot more time to render, also I'm rendering out at 1680x1050 size, which is pretty big.
This is a "Radiosity" render, mostly a test actually, to see what Radiosity does to an image:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/wildspace/characters/characters1realism.jpg
The character, creature, weapons, statues, pyramid are all Poser items (bought form DAZ), Vue can directly import them. But then I tweak them to get materials a lot better.
Poser still rules, far as I'm concerned, for *setting up and posing* characters.
Here's a test pic I did in Poser as I was building the parts for the scene:
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/darksun/darksunpyramid.jpg
You cna see there's a VAST difference between Poser and Vue (though, I did use postwork on the Vue pic in PaintSHopPro, so it's much warmer/contrasting than original)
Most of the really good Poser artists use a lot of postwork to overcome Poser's limitations and to create a much better final image, often massively altering it from the original.
There's quite a lot of apps, But I'd suggest trying Vue (or Bryce or Carrara), and seeing the difference.
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_6_ple/
That's the Perosnal Leanring Edition of Vue Infinite.
Note that my art rig is a *beast*. Quad core, 8 gig RAM, 64 bit system etc, I got it built to boost render speeds, or it would take a LOT longer than 3 hours ot render high quality scenes
It renders ten times faster than old Pentium4 3GHz rig.
Alas Poser cannot take real use of it though as only Poser Pro (which I don't have or want) can use a 64 bit system, meh.
Poser is fine for your illustration of campaign, if you used Vue it would take longer ot set up. But for fine art, if that's what you wish, Vue etc are totally out of Poser's league as renderers.
THough, in the end, it's always about the *artist*, not the apps, as beautiful work is most certianly done with Poser.
Frankthedm,
so:
frankthedm
(-AT-) gmail.com
that right??
I put the @ in
text to stop spam miners