"Ray-tracing (even if it DOES recurse, as opposed to no. of bounces) cannot ever match that...." Oh, you're absolutely right, diolma! Even the most advanced, physically accurate renderers in the industry can NEVER reproduce exactly what goes on with light when it travels and interacts with surfaces in the real world. It would take a vast legion of quantum-computers to crunch those complex variables, and even then it wouldn't come close! ;-)

---

Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.