I'm with you, estherau...

I buy content as opposed to spending my time creating it, because I am after throughput. Anything that slows me down without clearly visable dividends is an irritant. 

For example, IDL does slow things down, but there is a noticable improvement in the results, and a much simpler lighting strategy that it allows, so it is, imho, very much worth it.

Frankly, I've always thought GC was a colossal waste of time from the very beginning of this discussion a year or so ago. 9 times out of ten I get EXACTLY the lighting I want through simply setting the lights the way my common sense and experience tell me to. (I've been a photographer and have a great deal of TV experience.) When I do need a little help to short-cut things, HSV serves my needs perfectly.

I'm sure the true purists can see the difference in all three kinds of renders. I cannot. So, for me, GC is a colossal waste of time. If it were so wonderful, I suspect that the merchants would have begun to include settings for it in their products, just as they did when AO was the latest, greatest thing. From what I see, they have not.

This leads me to believe that GC is a fascination for a very few power users who have both the knowlege of Poser and the patience to fiddle with it and meet all of its needs. Hborre's post just above bears this out. I have no idea HOW to do the things he is talking about. For him and the others like him, that is fine. I'm glad they are having fun with it. For me, it's a serious bottleneck in my workflow. I'm waiting for the next release, when perhaps, Smith Micro will have the settings arranged automatically, and all of these things that currently bog me down with the process will disappear. Perhaps then I'll give it another try. If not, it stays turned off in my config sets.

Until then, I'm with you. I want things that I buy to work without heric measures.