Attached Link: http://www.pcbos.nl

Now this is what I call an interesting thread!

Great show, Classic, to bring in a painting- shows how far has computer to go..

I, likewise, simply couldn't resist and added a painting of my own, a close-up of a portrait I made of a Brazilian art-collector.
As you can see, neither the painting nor the Poser figure have those symmetrical shadows you were talking about- logical, because I'm a painter, and I wrote ECII to create the kind of Environments I was missing so much in the computer.

Special for the first questioner: The one I used in the rendering, was one out-of-the-box (from the "SunDown" Folder, in fact -both Bounce and Sky). I then took the whole
Environment to the LightWorkshop, turned Sun and Sky to get more light on the front of the face; toned the whole thing down with a tug on the Saturation slider; then did the same to the Bounce Lights. 1,5 Minutes from nothing to end, SnapShots taken at each change. I finally saved the lot as a "Total" SnapShot Def, so I can recreate the whole Environment, complete with all different steps that went into the making of it, later on with one click, and continue refining if wanted (I could have put a colder backlight on her shoulder, for instance).
Oh- by the way: model used is standard Vicky2.

Cheers,

Paul Christiaan