Where is the smooth polygon function used? Most stuff I have seen with the checked creates those huge bulbous things.... suppose on very lo res stuff to smooth it some, but that function seems to cause more problems than fix them, especially when it applies to the entire scene instead of just one particular object...or can it be applied to an individual object ???

Since Poser is a software mainly aimed at rendering organic objects (such as Vickies in temples and other places), the polygon smoothing is applied per default since it makes the models look smoother and more organic. The problem occurs when the object has sharp corners and edges, then you get the inflated baloon look and need to turn it off. When rendering characters, the polygon smoothing does its job correctly though.

think its a bit of the time when computer power was lower and the models had much lower polycount ( look at the wireframe of the p4 woman) to make such lowpolycount people or things look smooth. but there are several ways in modelling or using uvmappers splitt vertex tool to stop the ballooning

Yes you can apply it to individual objects. In the properties box of each object there is a "Smooth Polygons" check box. Just turn that off. It works great for organics like hair and people. Works real bad for walls and floors. It tries to tesselate the surface based on the normals at the corners. For a box that means the tessilation will get out of hand and you'll get inflated faces. Anything with highly bent adjacent poly faces will not smooth well. Now I'd wish they'd put like a threshold amount in the system which would solve a lot of this ie if the dot product of two adjacent face normals is below a certain value then do not smooth them. I already went through most of my building prop packages and set smoothing off on all parts and shadows off as well.

Metasequoia blows up mesh when there is a low poly count on the original and an increase in poly count selected. Kinda makes me wonder what app and what poly amount are used for models that blow up in Poser vs the models that don't. I'd love to see some research on this. On a side note, Ive never had a model blow up when smoothing in Bryce. Hmmmmmmmmm.