All I've read was the first thread, so my apoligies for any reitertion.

The answer, simply, is more curves.  The V3Print.PZZ this image was rendered from is roughly 5MB, and I'd say at least half of that is hair and shoes.

3D Polycount is very similr to 2D Resolution.  At a small scale everything looks the same, but render out to life sized, or something to fill a billboard, and there is no substiution for bigger polycounts and resolutions; your getting more places to pinpoint, bigger, textures.  

The Master V3Master.PZ3 that the V3Print.PZZ was formed from, is over 250MBs, but that file is as much as an archive as anything else.  When I'm not just making it bigger, and I do'nt need(for spinning dials) I do'nt work with it.  I've several threads I explained how I got from my Master to my Print scenes, but in a nutshell the free tools you may be interested in are:

SVDL's Spawcharcter.PY.
Ockhams ZeroMorphs.PY - To prep for the next tool.
SVDL's DeleteMorphs.PY - Deletes any moprh with a value of zero.
MorphManager - To really gut the BlankV3.CR2
And knowing how to Export/Import MT.OBJs is a major bonus