Hello

I am doing some work and to make it more realistic I am exporting the Poser files into Carrara or another app with better rendering.  Are there plugins or add ons that would allow me to do the photorealistic rendering in Poser with all the exporting as it does take time as most other 3d apps wont import the camera or the lights.....

Thank you.

Photorealism has more to do with the artist than with any tools.

I think it's possible. Just not consistently or easily. Light and DOF are the weak links. The material room is exceptional, though. Wish more apps were like it.

Poser doesn't have area lights and the ray tracing is really noisy at the edges. It also doesn't have radiosity or SSS. In other words it is very limited compared to higher end renderers. It doesn't mean you can't get something that looks photorealistic, but you are likely to have to work a lot harder and only be able to get it under more restrictive circumstances.

photorealistic rendering is not currently possible in Poser, due to problems in the implementation
of  FFRender in regard to indirect lighting, IBL/HDRI, light fall-off and et al.  a skilled user can
produce a render that's pleasing to the eye and has realistic texture mapping, but in the context of
duplicating a photo, poser renders can't do it IMVHO.

since the default user doesn't know how to activate indirect lighting in poser (it's available, but
unsupported) nor how to get light fall-off by the square of the distance (it's possible using one
of baggin's shaders), this obviously precludes any photorealism. the data sheet comparing poser
pro to previous versions is not encouraging in this regard IMVHO, but AFAIAC poser has always
been for posing figures and composing scenes for rendering in other apps.

Poser is a great program, but it's a lot harder to achieve realism with this app. You can set up your materials, shaders etc but the lighting will mainly let you down if you want realism. Some people do really well with it but it's alot harder.
I use Vue 6 Infinite & I can tell you that Global Radiosity is awesome! Poser is really missing this.

Thank you all..thats pretty much what I thought as I can render a lot better and easier by just importing into carrara and  setting a few parameters.

I sometimes see renders which I honestly can't tell if they are a photograph or 3D work.
Most of these are "architectural" scenes without people.
I admire the people who can do this, but I also admire people who can make beautiful, but obviously 3D, pictures.
Let's just say it's harder to make "life-like" renders in Poser than some other programs and leave it there. Perhaps the artists who can do this in Poser are more skilled than whose who can do it in Max, C4D etc.

I've never been able to get anything remotely close to photo-real renderings in Poser, but I've seen others come very close by using Face-Off's Hyper-Real shader.  The lack of high quality indirect lighting (e.g. Global Illumination, Radiosity) is a big draw back.

Yes.

In other words, as long as you use those stylyzed DAZ meshes right out of the box or just spin their default morphs dials, you can throw as many hi-rez ultra realistic 4000x4000 textures, global spectroscope daylight illumination lightsets and uber-complicated 100+ node shader setups at your mesh, the result will still look like a toy doll and nowhere close to a photograph.
Also don't get fooled by portraits.
Portraits are pretty' easy to get "realistic" compared to full body shots.

Wether you want a realistic human, a car, a tree, a house or whatever else, first get some photographs and/or scale plans and make sure that the dimensions, proportions and the anatomy are correct.
Don't waste your time on "quasi-realistic", "stylyzed" or "eye-balled" stuff that was created without a proper rig or was "sanitized" for better sales.
If you want to replicate reality, you first have to build an ACCURATE model of reality in your computer.
ACCURACY is the difference between a scale-model and a childrens toy, and in the 3D world it is the difference between your typical Poser render and what professionals do.
Wrong proportions and a lack of even the most basic anatomical features is not "art".
It's just sloppy modelling.

Look at the Poser >> Realism gallery.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?section_id=1&genre_id=25

I think you will see that truly photoreal works are few and far between.

Thanks muralist!  This is why I vote Poser.  I'd much rather spend %100 of my time learning one application; rather than %1 on each of a hundred application.  It just takes practice.  So far the complexity of Poser has'nt disappointed me, there is has always been more to learn.

And thank you jeffg3!

The latest technological catch phrase, in the 3D industry, is known as Sub Surface Scattering(SSS.)  Poser has a Fast Scatter node; which is SSS, but apparently is'nt multi-directional, hence is referred to as faked.
Attached is my latest WIP, using Face_Off's HyperRealV3.py.  I think he the most knowledgeable when it comes to realism for Poser. Once you become familiar with the parameters you can improve a medium complexion skin considerably, in just seconds!

bagginsbill is a close second.  He's done free work for Apollo Maximus, some  for V3, and is currently working on a Marketplace item for V4. 

Poser's Material Room is really intricate.  I would'nt suspect transfer to many other applications save Vue, which imports entire .PZ3s, would be very feasable. 

Although I'd defnitely like to see a comparison between your renders in Poser, and that of Carrara.  How long have you worked with each?  I just got Carrara 5 Pro, and would appreciate the contrast.

One of the issues besides lighting you have to deal with to get a photorealistic render is the texture. Unfortunately, many (if not most) of the texture venders that do skins for V3/V4 simply don't do textures that support photorrealism. Specifically, they leave in specular highlights and shadows. Look at most any lip texture and you will find specular highlights that only match the lighting of the source image. Put the model in a different light setting and it is completely wrong. (I've seen an otherwise beautiful portrait made very non photoreal because of those highlights on a lip in shadow...). Similarly, every texture I have has shadows under the breasts and/or the buttocks. For a photoreal render, specular highlights and shadows should be put in by the render engine, not by the texture.

Unfortunately, about the only recourse is to do your own... but by the time you put in a hundred or more hours doing the texture and then bump, specular, and SSS maps, you need to go to a higher end render engine to do them justice. Photorealism can be a harsh mistress!