I'd like to contribute a couple of links that deal with some obscure facets of Poser in regard to Smoothing and Raytracing. In either thread the topic centers mostly around ways to deal with render artifacts.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2859563#msg4011991

The above thread covers issues with Poser's smoothing and also deals with Raytracing and polygonal self shadowing artifacts. The thread also contains many links added by BagginsBill on the subject of Raytracing, I found this thread to be extremely helpful and resulted in my observations in the following link...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2864872#msg4049812

The above contains a lot of information about modeling for Poser with smoothing in mind. It covers the gamut of ways to deal with this.

The introduction of Subdivision surfaces in poser may render some of this information moot, but may be of value for those who are using earlier versions of Poser or are just curious.