I was wondering if anyone has any input on what are the best P5 render settings or lighting for photorealistic characters. cheerio lululee

For a start, try Traveler's free "poor man's HDRI" light sets from RDNA.

Should the Poser default light all be deleted before applying?

I like to always remove lights in Poser when applying a pre-set from the library. Poser is natorious at leaving the old lights in the scene and just turning them off, by doing so the renderer takes that much longer as it still calculates those lights. There are a couple great Python script in FreeStuff that can do this very easily.

Ive only just managed to get renders like u see on product overviews. The brighter the better, as for render settings, I used a pixel value thing (dont recall what its called) of about 1000 - 4000. I use 10,000 for close ups. Also, use SHARPEN in PSP or PS, makes a HUGE difference.

I was quite pleased with this result. Just two lights, only one with shadows. The second an uplighter, turned way down low. The skin itself has a probe light node attached. It renders like lightening....

Oh, Koz's hair and Tizania... and just a hint of displacement... and a smidge of anistropic on the eyes and lips...

Wow thanks for the tip Saxon. I don't really do any outside shots in Poser though I render those in Vue... but If I want to composite a Poser render into an out door shot or do a quick pic this'll come in handy. I too am a devotee of the idea of faking it with a couple of well placed lights, over the mega globe that IMO only produces slightly better results at a huge cost of render time. Havn't tried the Probelight node yet tho.

This was rendered in poser5- using the poser 4 render settings, no bump was applied either, also no post work was applied. it is the default settings too... , its all in the lighting :-) what stewer said was right, i just moved some of the lights around a bit and fiddled with the brightness dial. go and try poorman light sets, u will not be dissapointed, and they are FREE! :-)

That sure looks like Angelina Jolie! Wow!

Wow those are good, what does HDRI stand for?

i dont know , but who ever made these are very smart and my hat goes off to them for there contribution to the world of 3d, check out MEC4D.com, Cath does some really good renders, some of the best ive ever seen.