Okay, okay ... I've got to speak up. This is certainly impressive stuff, but with people saying "this is the quality we should be aiming for" and "I really feel like an amateur," I really wonder what most people's goals are with Poser. Is the goal to make the most life-like, photo-realistic render that can possibly be done?

Personally I own a couple really good cameras, I know how to work with human models and I'm pretty good in a darkroom. If I'm looking for realism those are my tools of choice. If I needed 3D people to perform stunts in movies that couldn't be done with real actors, then this stuff would be appropriate as it would in making game figures more lifelike. Basically, in the field of entertainment. But for gallery renders ... isn't the important thing something about sparking emotion; a picture being worth a thousand words; speaking to humankind through an image; expressing yourself uniquely ... and on and on and on ... in other words ART?

Just my opinion - while these images are most impressive from a purely technical viewpoint, they hardly serve as the apex of what I'm personally looking to achieve either visually or aesthetically.