moriador: it took me a while to work out that control edges can do the job without a bevel ! And I'd agree that a bit of creative playing in the material room can improve the appearance of sharp edges, as long as they're not too close up. And I recall reading a few threads/posts that mentioned bump/displacement maps (or more generally any greyscale maps) and gamma correction. I think the advice was that they should use 1.0 (but I may be wrong - I can't track theURLs down at the moment).

I guess that 'smooth polys' is something most people don't think about unless they see the ballooning effect, or they get sharp edges in the render where they expect smooth curves. I know that I'm not usually certain whether I've got it on or off !

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The 3Dcheapskate* occasionally posts sensible stuff. Usually by accident.
And it usually uses Poser 11, with units set to inches. Except when it's using Poser 6 or PP2014, or when its units are set to PNU.

*also available in ShareCG, DAZ, and HiveWire3D flavours (the DeviantArt and CGBytes flavour have been discontinued).