Arnold is an awesome render engine .... but as others have said there is no plugin for DS/Poser, and no simple to use standalone GUI (though there is a comand line intrerface). If you have a copy of Maya, XSI, or Houdini floating around - there are plugins for them.

Actually, 3Delight, the renderer used in DS, is a great render engine, and has been used for several big films. If you're willing to "get under the hood" of the shaders and lighting, you can actually do a lot with it. But it does seem the the DS version is a bit slow, and a bit behind the full commercial version releases. So, you actually have a top notch render engine with DS.

Reality/LuxRender is a very affordable way to get into fully unbiased rendering in either Poser of DS, but your render time will typically be longer. The materials system is fairly simple to understand, but like any external renderer, you will need to do some material editing to get the best results (though most materials transfer very well with Reality). For DS you also have the option of using Luxus (at DAZ) to render with Lux. Some people prefer the Reality interface, others like Luxus, it really comes down to personal preference. Either plugin is very affordable, and LuxRender is free.

Ocatne is another possibility for unbiased rendering if you have a decent Nvidia video card, with a min. of 2Gb of VRAM. There are plugins for both Poser and DS. I really like Octane. It's not for everyone, but it sounds like it would work well for the types of scenes you render. It's also a lot more expensive than Reality or Luxus, but it is really fast with outstanding results. You will typically need to adjust mat/shaders with Octane, but the shader system using either of the plugins is very easy to understand.

Another option is Carrara, I've use Carrara for years, and it has a very good render engine that I've found to be faster than either DS or Poser. I also find the shader system to be much more intuitive than eiather DS or Poser. Lighting is also quite easy for me, and the quality settings are quite esay to understand. For rendering right now, I typically prefer Carrara and Octane over DS/3Delight or Poser/Firefly.

Vue is another option, with Pioneer being free (and fairly limited) up to Infinite at  $1295. A lot of people really like using Vue to render Poser/DS content. If you lke to do large outdoor landscape type scenes, it could be a very good choice. But you will have the learning curve of another 3D application to endure.

Other options that would reguire exporting DS or Poser scenes (via .obj) for rendering that are good choices would be Blender/Cycles (free) or TheaRender (€295.00 -r ~$400) which has biased and unbiased rendering as well as CPU, GPU, and CPU?GPU hybrid renderes.

Of all of the "external" renderer options, the plugin route is typically the easiest (smallest learning curve). The plugins for LuxRender would be the least expensive, and would be the best way to see if you like unbiased renderers. A lot of the skills learned with Lux will easily transfer to Octane if you decide to go with it.

If your interested to see a comparison of what someone with modest skills in DS or Poser can do with Carrara, Octane, Reality/Lux (via Poser and DS), or Luxus/Lux, take a quick look at my gallery here, I have renders done with all of them.

Hope this helps!

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