Quote - ArtBee has hit the nail on the head.

To address your original statement... I hold suspect any statement that begins with "most people are using...". I spent money on a traslator to one of the "other" render engines and got a very rude awakening: Be advised that these alternative render engines have another major drawback if throughput is an issue. They are slow. Very slow. As with most things in the world there is a tradeoff between speed and quality. 

I don't have TIME for these alternatives. If you do, then be prepared to put the effort in that ArtBee and others are warning you of, and be willing to wait MUCH longer for the results.

$.02

 

If that "other" render engine is Lux, then yes - and no. I've had renders completing (well as far as Lux completes them, seeing that it never stops) in far less time than Poser would even do the IDL pass. And I've had Lux renders that took three days and still weren't QUITE there yet. With Lux, it all boils down to lights. A well lit scene will render very fast, IMO faster than Poser, while a dimly (or badly) lit scene will take much longer.

As an example, this one:
 took some 20 minutes, while this one:

was the three day render (partially because of the DoF, but still L)

 

So fast is relative. And quality is relative. and indeed, sometimes Firefly is far superior, for instance, Reality still can't translate all sorts of math nodes properly (quite logical, because they were tailor made for Firefly and not some other render engine)

That said, I do 99% of my rendering in Lux now. Once I got the idea I find lighting the scene MUCH easier with reality than with Poser.

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You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.