Before you get all excited, this isn't supposed to be a 'blow your socks off' photorealistic render. It's not even close for all sorts of obvious and not so obvious reasons. But I think it's moving in the right direction in some ways (despite the lack of hair and zero attention paid to eye shaders and such), and much closer than I think I could have gotten with earlier versions of Poser (this was done with a beta version of P8 - I've not managed to get hold of the full release version or updates. It uses IDL though).

What does still amaze me just with the introduction of IDL is that for this render I only had to use two lights - the indirect (bounced) light accounted for a significant amount of illumination at render time. And I think the result shows a much more realistic simulation of RW lighting.

But I think the more tools we get with each version of the software, the more we have to re-evaluate the elements we're working with and our approach to using them.
Since playing with IDL, for example, I've become much more aware of problems relating to mesh design and shaping (morphs) and figure bending, as well as the details in the various diffuse and control maps (bump, specular etc). Each of these elements now become far more noticable factors that can help or hinder realism. These are not really software related, so we can't really point the finger at Poser (unless you're using the included figures and content, but then these still arn't a problem with the app itself).

We are still missing a few app related realism features -  e.g. some shader elements - a decent simulation of SSS, transluscence, probably some extra math nodes - among other things. And there would seem, based on comments made at various times by folk like BB, that there are improvements that could be made with the current implementation of material, lighting and rendering (e.g. , Poser has difficulties dealing with transparency in cetain circumstanceswhich can make hair problematic).

My point here really is that Poser is moving forward, but it's bound to move more slowly with the limited resources that the developers have (in relation to the industry big boys). CGI realism is comlplex and comes at a cost - Poser is cheap but still does a lot for the bucks. We'll get a lot closer to photorealism in time.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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