Thanks for all your input.

Markschum:
do you know of a tutorial or a thread somewhere that explains how to get a poser scene into Lightwave? Got a demo of that app, but as I feared the book that included the demo cd has 721 pages. And there is of course no chapter "how to import poser scenes" ;-)

Peelo:
Vue7 is on my interest list. Stunning images there on their website. But one step after the other.

Anthanasius:
There is screenshot on the first page of this thread, that shows the wireframe including the two pointlights. You are right, the image is somehow flat, but it does not make sense to do any adjustments because I can't predict the effect of some of the settings. E.g. see the two renders above where I changed the IDL bounces from 3 to 10. Maybe that is a setting to increase the quality, but it changes the light completely (should it do so? I don't know). I would expect, that increasing the bounces would make the IDL more detailed. My understanding is, more bounce = the rays are bouncing more often between the surfaces. But doing so they should rapidly loose energy. But according to that sample render I got the feeling they are bouncing without loosing energy. As a result more bounces = maybe more quality but also a lot more light. That's just my interpretation, and that might be completely wrong.
That's why I gave up for now with poser for that scene. I'll try to make the same one in another app and see where it will take me. If I get the same results there like with poser, then I should quit 3D completely, because then I have to admit that I am to simple minded for this stuff.