From my point of view it's not so much that (photo)realism is a 'holy grail' as such, rather it's a means to comprehensively understanding the visual world and representations of it (be it observed or imagined).
I've persued this in various media (drawing, painting, CGI etc) to empower myself with choice about how I represent ideas visually, rather than accepting the limitations of my skills at any given time. Sometimes, of course, the tools do have limitations - Poser is still limited in terms of the persuit of photo realism in many ways, but it has gotten a lot more capable and it is still a very cheap app. Perhaps pushing these limitations will have its own reward in terms of grasping CGI.

While I don't feel I 've mastered CGI as comprehensively as the other more tactile media I've used over the years (I consider most of the renders I've done to be tests rather than accomplished artworks), I do hope to be able to use it more freely as time goes on.

So perversely the point for me in studying realism is so that I can knowingly choose to make my imagery realistic or unrealistic as an idea demands, rather than being forced into a certain look.

In fact I'm quite intrigued by the 'almost photo-real' as a stylistic choice for representations, but this is only appropriate in my mind for certain subject matter. I usually try to use media and styles that I feel are appropriate for the subject matter I'm dealing with, and this has led me to use forms as diverse as crudely painted canvases in oils to highly polished sculpural reliefs made with modern polymers - whatever is appropriate for the idea.

3d is just another tool that I felt compelled to learn to open up my creative avenues and choices.

 

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

                                      www.danielroseartnew.weebly.com