My rendering skills are sorely lacking. All that work BB did and I STILL can't make it look right. And worse, I KNOW it has to do with the environment I put the sword in.

Without seeing anything from your Poser setups or renders, I can't give specific advice. Here are some tips, though:

Use good HDR images with an environment sphere. By good, I mean ones that actually have high dynamic range. I posted a comprehensive series about this topic - worth a read. --http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2877297&page_number=3Here's a great source of free, high resolution, high dynamic range images: http://www.hdri-hub.com/free-samples

Getting light levels and "exposure" right is often a matter of trial and error. Get it wrong and you may find shaders don't behave as you expect. All my (post 2010) modern shaders are as physically accurate as I can make them so if they look wrong, you probably have the environmental lighting off. I use my light meter, even when I think I know what I'm doing. If you're even slightly not clear on what's happening, get and use my light meter.

Use gamma correction and use it correctly. 

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)