Russ, there are many ways to create an image, here is my mindset just for the record. there are two types of renderers, biased and unbiased of which luxrender is unbiased and 3delight and firefly which poser uses is biased.

Unbiased rendering is more about the techinical aspect and achieving light results that mimic what you would see and how they react in real life. Biased is more about just lighting a 3D model/environment to achieve many different scenarios.

 

I have been a long time poser user (5, 6, 7, 2012) and gotten some great results with it, but it always bothered me that I had to trick the scene to achieve a realistic light solution rather than just applying a light and letting it light the scene realistically like you can with luxrender. You also have to take into account the different user interfaces for each program/app. I hate the library pallette layout on poser pro 2012 compared to what DS4 pro offers. Also I find setting up/changing shaders/textures much easier with the DS/reality interface than using the nodes in poser.

 

I also do not believe in using postwork when using unbiased rendering as it takes away from the technical aspect of it, but I have used it for some projects and commissions and you can get some good results, even with unbiased rendering, basically the best of both worlds, other than long render times.

There is no rule that says you have to use one or the other, I have many different apps installed, poser, carrara, DS4, Vue etc, each has there own pros and cons. If you can afford it, poser is worth a try.

Regards, Michael

My DeviantArt page