Ah, now, that's advice I was hoping for... I was originally going to head over to the 3D modeling forum and troll for suggestions, but when I saw the "We can't decide for you" disclaimer at the top of the page I knew that it would be the same question asked ba-zillions of times before, and therefore would probably not be well received again. ^_^

I have not done much that could even remotely be considered complicated (I haven't done anything that outstrips the sample files, even), so the renderer has yet to be disappointing, or even challenged. Ergo, no complaints.

As for ZBrush, the price is daunting and the demo is very limiting (well, for me anyway... exporting is disabled and half the point of trying the program is seeing how well it interacts with the other programs I want to use, for example), but I may be able to give it a look. Basically I'm at "interested amatuer" level, $500 is more in the intermediate range, if you see what I mean. But thanks for offering the idea. ^_^