I was looking through the Marketplace, and saw something that I rather liked, but from the product shots it was painfully clear that the thing I hate most in a model was present: the hard 90 degree edge.

When you're making any kind of furniture - nearly anything actually-- you should never have a true 90 edge. They don't occur in nature, and the Poser render engine in particular renders them very harshly.

Its also trivially easy to bevel an edge, and given that that we're speaking of scenes which routinely carry tens if not hundreds of thousands of polys, spending a few on an edge which will render decently is not a big deal.

When I look at bad renders, the #1 problem is terrible lighting (and anyone can have nice realistic lighting with two clicks under Poser 7, if they trouble themselves), and the #2 problem is "razor-edge" geometry-- that's much harder for the user to fix.

I totally agree. Even to my untrained eye, hard edges make a piece of furniture or whatever look so artificial that it is virtually useless in any scene.

Would bevelling hard edges also eliminate the problem with the 'ballooning' of some surfaces when they are rendered with polygon smoothing switched on?

Or is that something different?

Beveling does help with the balooning problem. I routinely bevel every ninety degree angle I put on something. If I want it to look really sharp, like a knife edge, I use a really, really small bevel, of course, but it's always there.

It's my goal in life to make my Poser render engine happy, and beveling seems to do it.

I mainly bevel the edges I want to remain hard...;) if you bevel by a touch (don't know the 'magic' amount, I use around .005), you can reduce the 'airbag effect' some. Sometimes I just skip it, especially if I'm modeling big, fluffy furniture (making Poser work for you...turning a frown upside down...;)

i eliminate airbaginess from the parameters/smooth polygon, crease angle setting, but i do bevel edges.

Ballooning happens a lot when you don't have enough polys... or at least that's what I've noticed.

And yes, unbeveled edges are bad.  I saw an item in the marketplace in which the vendor put a ton of effort into the texture, but didn't bevel the edges... in fact it looked like it had a pretty low poly.  I ended up passing on that item.

The amount of bevel also affects lights and shadows, so it makes that edge more noticable too...great for hard lined objects.

Quote -
And yes, unbeveled edges are bad.  I saw an item in the marketplace in which the vendor put a ton of effort into the texture, but didn't bevel the edges... in fact it looked like it had a pretty low poly.  I ended up passing on that item.

Yup, I've done just the same. I don't want to criticize any vendor specifically, but at the same time wanted to give a "heads-up" to folks that they lose sales this way. I'm not sure if there's a FAQ for for vendors, but this point should be in it, its a rather common mistake, and sometimes occurs on things where a lot of work appears to have been done.

Some other renderers are a bit more gentle with harsh edges-- Lightwave had a neat shader that would render bevels on hard edged geometry, without altering the geometry. . .  but its much easier just to add a few polys in the first place.

Even worse are items in the RMP like "Nurbia" which had welded edges that caused the planes which were not backside or otherwise un-renderable to render with inverted shading... spent hours with the grouping tool and UVmapper trying to unweld vertices and flip normals to make that thing renderable but the results still look like hell.

All props sold as Poser-ready should have beveled edges, sensible grouping and materials, reasonable UVs.

I am amazed by the hi-poly furnture put up for sale that looks like it is upholstered in cardboard! Yes, bevel the edges, use the Morph Brush to create some sag and variation... add piping and seams to the modeling. Maybe look at some real world designs to come up with plausible styling and construction.

Also it seems none of the new generation 4 clothing I see these days has seams modeled or displaced on them... it all looks cut from those new seamless cast body suits used in Olympic swimming now. I have only seen one Poser clothing maker whose modeling and UV mapping simulates the patterns used in making real clothes... the form built out of pannels rather than 'painted on' the figure mesh.

If I need a "sharper" edge on something, I generally do a very small chamfer along the desired edges/areas....but I don't do a lot of furniture outside of some older (and slightly crappy) freebies designed to be mid-poly slightly toony things.

For clothing - you run into a few issues. Not everyone modeling clothing has a background in sewing or working with patterns - or has ever seen one for that matter. Sure, they could go take a look in the closet and see how something is put together...but seeing the finished product doesn't mean you know what went into putting it together.

I tell people that want to start modeling clothing to go to a fabric store and find a pattern for doll clothing (Barbie is great for this - multiple outfits in one package) and just take a look at them. Simpler than a person sized garment, but still enough to get a better idea on how to put something together. Buy some fabric scraps, cut the clothing out and have it there in front of you while modeling....and if you don't feel like tacking the pieces together by hand sewing - get some fabric glue and assemble the outfit. Then you not only have a pattern to help assist with UV layout - you have a physical representation of what you're trying to model sitting in front of you while you work.

T-shirts are another matter since they're knit in a tube and assembled at the shoulder seams - and I've gone a few different ways setting up the UV map on something like that.

Just takes some planning, and lots of practice and experimentation....and I generally try to find a nice middle ground between the two for my piddly offerings.