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hman, while it is true that 3Delight is used in other apps and may be the better renderer that does not mean that you can use that power easily in Studio. You IO'm pretty sure you cannot use the same shaders as a Maya user can, and you don't have the same options.

Yes Agreed...that is absolutely true, however the shaders in DS are getting better and better, so its good they have a renderer that is capable of those advanced types of shaders. 

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About crystal-clear renders, well - if you choose a low shading rate and switch off texture filtering, you get a crystal-clear render in Firefly as well. I'm the last to say that Firefly does not have bugs, but it works for me, I get good renders from it. I've got good results with depth mapped shadows in the past, but recently I very much prefer ray traced shadows, because they look much better.

Yes again..true, the Firefly is fine for a lot of things.
But even with a low shading rate in the Firefly and texture filtering off...I still cant get the level of detail I can in the 3Delight render...and that is important to me.
However there are many amazing renders done in the Firefly...its the artist that makes the difference...and I realize that is the most important thing always.
I still use the Firefly for some things...because I find the Poser shader tree a little easier to use than the DSA ones...they are a bit more visual (IMO)
As far as the shadow maps go...yes raytracing is nicer, but sometimes shadow maps are good to use as well, but they are unusable in larger scenes in Poser.
I was on the beta test when the Firefly was first implemented (when Steve Cooper was the boss) and I complained about this back then (before DS was anything much) but they didn't do anything about it.
Same in Poser 6...they did nothing about...so I did no more betas from then on.
Now what I have found ...is that using both along with AO works best...you can see an example here in a city I built and developed the lighting for as well
(you have to use the magnifying glass to zoom in)
http://s223.photobucket.com/albums/dd184/hjmann//
In other words it would be nice if they fixed this problem with the shadow maps so they are usable in larger scenes...along with a bit of fine tuning in the detail department.
One good programmer could do that fairly easily...maybe SM may look at this?

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If you get better renders from 3Delight, that's great. The renderer most proably has more options then Firefly has at the moment, but many of them cannot be used from D|S at the moment, and others need to be bought. And, to my experience, Firefly isn't half as bad as you make it here.

It wasn't my intention to make it sound bad...basically all I am saying is its not as good as the 3 Delight (even with DSA current shaders).
This is not a trumpet call about Daz or DSA.
As you probably know the 3 Delight is developed by DNA research... not Daz!!...and thats a good thing because it's their baby, and it is developed aggressively, whereas the Firefly will get updated in time by SM,  therefore it probably will be much slower in it's development, because SM have a lot on their plate.
BUT!! that aside...a good Poser user that knows the app and has an artistic eye...will get brilliant renders from the Firefly in most situations.
Again I use both apps regularly...they both have their strengths (and I am glad they are both there...competition is always good)
Cheers