I am always impressed when I see a render and have to look hard to see if it is a photo or a render but it is never my aim.  With renders involving people it is very difficult to get realism without it looking somewhat freakish or un-nerving.

I came to 3D from photography, a hobby I still enjoy (although maybe not as much as I no longer finish up in a dark room with trays of smelly chemicals) so perhaps that has a bearing.  In 3D I don't see much point in trying to create and field, building or person that I can capture with my camera.  Much of my 'art' is based in Sci-Fi or fantasy and so the aim is to try and make the image believeable without being scary, unless I am aiming to scare a little. 

I can't see I will ever have time to learn the skills needed, or the inclination to start producing photo realistic renders.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.