Attached Link: Making of 'Portrait of a Silent Man'

Patrick Eischen gives a good overview of making a realistic human render using "only" C4D and a specialized skin shader plug-in. He uses only four maps but I've seen perhaps half a dozen used in other instances. Without that level of detail - at a minimum - to say nothing of the lighting and material settings, is it wrong to suggest that no mere change of render engine is going to produce great results? Conversely, with something approaching that degree of effort, would not the existing render engines, within their limits (Poser's included), not yield impressively better results than generally seen?

I agree with Abraham that the figures themselves are not the primary perceived limitation IMO. While there will always be those who concentrate on their flaws, I think many people are reasonably satisfied with them. What they crave is some elusive look that they feel can be obtained with another renderer. It may well be that once having achieved that, their attention would then turn to the finer points of rigging. OTOH, some new trend may catch on by then to supplant the Holy Grail of synthetic reality.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken