Quote - "almost all of it looks better with Bagginsbill's shaders replacing most of the defaults... certainly when these defaults are just using diffuse and bump image / colour maps"

Certainly, and raytraced reflection and refraction too. Then why not let that be to the newbie so he can feel that he/she has accomplished something? Do you know something about pedagogy?

 (I must go, its very late)

Yes, sure... personally, I do take, what I think is (?) your point here too Vintorix... i.e. that certain levels of "shading" within Poser (e.g. within newer versions) are maybe effectively best treated as advanced user settings (similar even to adjusting IDL bounces etc)... on top of good textures... and shared separately to the distribution of the vendor products... is this the kind of idea that you mean??

Cheers ;-)