One thing to keep in mind is if you going to be importing your figures, props, etc. into other 3D applications besides Poser. Some of this works great in Poser, but once you import into another application, like say Vue or C4D, you may or may not have the same look since the shaders, nodes, etc. are different.

The best way I found if using another program is to do the tweaking of all the imported mat files and make sure your scene has proper lighting. Lighting is critical to how something looks and you can spend a lot of time on just that. Also, using VERY good high resolution textures is important for realism.

I have been working a LOT with ZBrush 3.5R3 and find that it a very powerful program. Everyone is waiting for version 4 which is due out by the end of September 2010 since that is Pixelogic's 10th anniversary. They are working hard on a fully revamped way of making textures. If you have seen "Mari" then you know what to expect, maybe even more. It will totally revolutionize texture creation.

Jeff

Development on: Mac Pro 2008, Duel-Boot OS - Snow Leopard 10.6.6 & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon , 10GB 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.