i need some basics on how to render realistic images in poser
becuase all of my renders look like crap

Hi Jackph... don't despair, it started that way for most of us, if not all of us. But there is a heck of a lot of learning between c**p and realistic...

Why not post one of your renders, say in the notes that you are looking for help and ask for critical comments? It's a good way to get started, and you'll get lots of help. You don't have to leave the image up there once you are doing things a bit better!

Jack, are you using the draft settings perhaps?

Realism comes with practice. A lot of the realism is down to lighting, but first of all you need to be comfortable with various render settings.
Also, simply sliding the bar over to "Maximum" isn't automatically going to make your render more realistic.
FaceOff did a very good AO tutorial here which might help you a little with some of the realism.

Acadia posted a ton of tutorial links in the sticky at the top of the forum, but Tebop did a good tutorial on skin shaders here

Also -- first thing I do when I start a new scene is... delete the default lights, create my own lights and set up my own camera. While the latter isn't necessarily needed, deleting the default lights is the first step to realism, because the default lights... suck. :)

I use my own spots. You'll have to experiment some for how you like your first lights to be, then save them so you can reuse them.

Hope it helps a little. :)

thanks for all of the help
i am sorry for the noob question
i just need lost of help
i always see the AO thing but i am not 100% sure what it stands for
(once again, sorry for the noob questions)
i did use a tut that i found from GND that i have that helped alot
but with those settings
the render takes like 15 hours
although i was rendering a 1200x1200 pixel picture
i just don't know anything about lighting a scene very well
and i would love to add depth of blur(?) to the scene
without it looking like crap too

but once again
thank you for your help

AO = Ambient Occlusion

Basically the shadow created by something that's nearby/touching something else. The shadow in between your fingers, for instance.
Basically, if you look at your fingers, there is a little shadow in between your fingers even in bright light, where the other fingers obscure the light.

Make sense? :)

Depth of Field (DoF) will push up your render time, as will ambience on lighting.

Don't dispair. I've been doing this for years and I still get it wrong. :) Practice, practice, practice. That's the key to it all.
You'll render a lot of crappy images when you start out, but with every render you learn more, see what things do, and one day you have an "A-HA!" moment and suddenly you look at it all a little differently, apply things differently or in a way you never did before.

We all still learn, Jack. Don't feel bad. :)

And as someone a lot wiser than me once said: The only dumb question is the one you never ask.
After all -- how can you learn if you don't ask questions?

Post your render in the gallery and post a link to it in this thread, or attach them to your posts here.