This is probably lame.  In D|S you can select "MAT" in the surfaces tab to eliminate the plastic look.  Is there something that simple in the Poser materials?

My panther would  look better if it wasn't so shiney! 

Set the Specular_Value = 0 in the material room. Then there is no shine. 

I haven't seen what you're rendering, but you mentioned a panther. Fur and skin is neither shiny nor mat, but somewhere in between. I agree you don't want a "plastic" shader, but dropping the specular altogether is not the best answer.

Try Specular_Value = .05 to .3, and Roughness = .05 to .2. Experiment with these on a simple object like a sphere. Get to know how these looks, and then you'll be able to dial these in from memory.

Thanks!

I'll give it a try.

I really want to get a handle on the Material Room.

There are two views for the Materials Room, Basic and Advanced.  While the Advanced view is intimidating at first, too much is hidden from you in Basic view, so if you really want to learn it, switch to Advanced view - everything in there is documented fairly well in the manual.

Much better!

Thanks again.

Any idea what "roughness" translates to in Poser 7? I can't find it in the material room, nor in the manual... :(

The PoserSurface has a built-in "Diffuse" node and a built-in "Specular" node, along with a bunch of other stuff. The parameters for a Specular node are:

Specular_Color
Specular_Value
Roughness
Normals_Forward

For some stupid reason, the Specular built in to PoserSurface calls it Highlight_Size.

They mean the same.