ROFL Oh for f***s sake...Coke or Pepsi?:lol:

Both engines produce good results when settings are properly applied.

D|S 3Delight is somewhat easier to use straight out of the box and is rispec standard allowing the use of renderman compliant shaders while Poser Firefly has better accessibility to surface settings so edges out the D|S front end for 3Delight in usability for average users.

Any way you cut it to get the best results you're going to have to learn how the render engine of choice  works and create appropriate surface settings.

If you want grab-n-go rendering and are satisfied with using other people's shaders , D|S. If you want better control and to roll your own, Poser.

You want to learn something about how materials work in general download the Kerkythea material editor guide. It's a good primer on the theories and practices of material/shader creation and easy to follow. (Mr Baggins Bill sir, your information is priceless but you use the "M" word too often and it frightens off the folks that have to remove their shoes to count up to twenty.)

Interested in rispec, go to the MOSAIC blog page and have at it, enough info and links there to keep a body busy for awhile.

In my most recent gallery pic here on Renderosity the vase texture is a fractal generating node based material converted to rispec using MOSAIC and rendered through the D|S 3Delight front end. The magnolia branch uses another material node set-up in Blender also converted through MOSAIC.

HLSL anyone? Nvidia and ATI developer info pages.

Now I just want info on the free DAZ Studio Plugin SDK that maclean mentioned. :biggrin: (Last I checked it was $199.00 unless you have a current commercial QT license.)