Quote - So the moral of this thread is that since very few (if any) surfaces in nature are perfectly smooth, it's a good reminder to always add some surface bump and scatter on materials, especially when using GC, or you'll get those harsh terminators.

related issue may be IDL artifacts in corners (orthogonal surfaces) when using IDL pre-calc mode.  if there are no naturally-occurring orthogonal surfaces on the macroscopic scale,  they may always be rough/beveled/rounded when viewed up close, i.e. not perfect.  thus, representing a corner as the intersection of two flat planes, with no fine detail of polygons at the intersection, may be a bad idea in poser.