Quote - > Quote - There is no "put a point light here" and "put a spotlight there" that will work. Lights should reflect what is in your scene.

I disagree with this. Where lights are put in a scene does effect how they will render. I've once placed spot lights too close and ended up with a fully dark blacked out scene, but then when pulled out that effect is gone.I'm assuming it has a lot to do with how the pre-set lights were made. I remember buying a set of Spot lights and they were all facing way down toward the floor. So once I clicked rendered, my scene was totally black. Point lights are usually used on things like candles, lamps, etc.

Also where lights are place can have an effect on where the shadows will appear too. So it definately does matter where the lights are.

LOL. OF COURSE where lights are put in a scene affects how it will render! I'm not saying they won't. I am saying they WILL. 

That is why no one can tell you where to put your lights. Because we can't see your scene and how the lights will affect it. That's all I was saying. That YOU have to be the one to experiment with lighting and that no one else can do it for you. Because no one else has your scene.

Quote - Point is, unless you require ultra high-end realism from your renders, for film or print, then you should really consider not spending the money.  Because you don't need to.  The example of realism indicated by the OP in this thread doesn't seem extraordinary to me (no offense to the artist of course), so Firefly could easily achieve that result.  If that's the level the OP is looking for, the tools to get it are already on his system in Firefly.  However, if true photorealism is the goal, where someone inexperienced in CG might not know the difference between the render and reality, then Octane or Luxrender are the tools to look at.

Yes, exactly. The examples given by the OP do look to me like they use IDL, so that effect probably won't be possible without learning how IDL works. But Firefly certainly has the ability to reproduce those effects, and with some material shader changes, Firefly could produce more realism than shown in those examples.

Actual photorealism needs an unbiased renderer, as you point out.

The question is, is the time it will take to learn to produce near-realism in Firefly worth it for the render time reductions, or would the OP be better off buying Reality and having longer render times, but less work learning to set up the scene?

Me, I chose to use Firefly because once you've learned to set up and light a scene and fix materials, you've learned, and you don't need to learn again (until Poser introduces a new render engine, that is).

But if someone really just cannot get a handle on how to light scenes in Poser no matter how hard they try, then using Reality is probably a very good idea.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.