I think a large part of it is the way it's put together. It seems to be more the effort that is put into the image that the naysayers have a problem with. From what it says in that thread on CGTalk, Richard Marchand uses more than Poser in his images, 3ds max, Photoshop, Poser can achieved some better results than Poser alone if done correctly. The naysayers do tend to generalize too much since if you just use the defaults in any single program, of course the results aren't going to be what they could be. But if you take the time and effort to get the most of what it can do then the effort is going to show in the final result. That's the point, it's not what tools the artist uses it's what he does with them and the naysayers usually miss that when they get caught up in only focusing on the technical aspects. Banning the use of certain programs in the challenges on CGTalk is fairly shortsighted since it's the expertise that the artist brings in how they use them that is what makes the image. If as they say The whole purpose of the Challenge is to learn. then wouldn't they encourage practicing how to get the most out of any program or technique that contributes to making the best image for the final result?

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