Quote - Some professional artists still laugh derisively at users of Smith Micro's Poser software (include users of DAZ Studio for the sake of this discussion).

I think the main reason is simply that most poser work is mediocre. I think if there was a huge body of excellent work done in poser it would start to speak for itself, the perception would change, but unfortunately very few poser users produce really good renders.

Using pre-made content isn't really the issue, lots of 'pro' users use pre-made ready-to-render stuff. Businesses like Xfrog, Evermotion, Dosch etc wouldn't exist otherwise. Software like modo has a library system a lot like poser's runtime to allow users to exchange pre-made content.

The point is that using pre-made content should take your work to a higher level - if you save a lot of time and effort by not making from scratch every last thing in the scene, you should have a lot more time to focus on lighting, composition, rendering and postwork.

Unfortunately, the majority of poser users are downloading premade everything,  figures, poses, expressions, morphs, background rooms/scenes, furniture, props, material sets, and even light sets, and still producing a lot of dreary, mediocre work, so I would say the derision is perhaps justified.