I seem to recall reading that in films, they sometimes have multiple models – presumably with different construction/functionality – for different shots etc. I imagine that in the same way, the model used for a box cover or cut scene may not be the same as the in game model. Also, in films, you have the luxury of using any number of cheats to make things look the way you want. I caught a bit of the Transformers movie on TV the other night. In the transformation scenes, it was hard to see exactly what the heck was going on except a lot of parts jumping around. I tend to doubt that all of the pieces were actually moving in a coordinated fashion they way they would on a real model.

In Poser, people understandably want a model that’s going to look good from every angle, and they want the moving parts to move and look like they would in real life, even if they’re rendering a still image of any arbitrary pose. I imagine people would want to create armies of these things too so having some kind of low polygon alternative would be nice – a lot of sometimes conflicting demands for one poor model ÷)

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