1.  Starts with the mats.  The best lighting in the world won't help you if you've got the wrong mats, the mats aren't gamma corrected, they were designed and tested with certain specific (different) lighting.

2.  Now the lights, they need to match your scene.  This is very important to photograpy, but is slightly less important in poser just because of the nightmare that is all your materials in a complex scene.  They set up your lighting.

3.  Poses, this one is pretty easy to get wrong because it's easy to go from real to this looks nice without noticing it.  While I'm thinking about it, if you are doing dynamics and there's any transition at all, what frame you character stops at is important.  I was using one of Biscuits dynamic outfits and when vicky stopped too soon, her lack of panties soon became appearent.

4.  Expressions.  This needs to be right.

5.  The camera.  I think this is the easiest one for someone to forget about.  Angle and location are important and people often overlook this.  They too often set the scene to the camera instead of putting the camera in the right location for the scene.

6.  World clutter.  This weakness annoys me a lot.  In the real world, there isn't just one or two things, there's a lot of things.  Getting enough stuff in the scene to look right is a challenge.

7.  Render settings, these are the finishing touches so you can have mirrors, IDL, SSS, etc, xyz. 

WARK!

Thus Spoketh Winterclaw: a blog about a Winterclaw who speaks from time to time.

 

(using Poser Pro 2014 SR3, on 64 bit Win 7, poser units are inches.)