I do think so, I use the plugin version and I can do all my lighting and materials interactively. With my gear (dual nVidia 770) it's say 100x faster than Poser firefly (on 12 thread 4GHz CPU) - which is a life-saver for animation - while Poser does have some fundamental (un-resolvable) flaws when it comes close to realism.

But do note that one usually wants more / faster video cards on top of the SW costs, and it does take time to learn the tricks of a new trade.

Artists like RGUS publish about daily in the Rendo gallery, you can ask them as well (as most don't frequent the Rendo forum). 

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though