@AmbientShade:

While weightmapping M2 I made a little experiment. I subdivided M2Lo twice and then Morphbrushed the better detailed FBM musclemorph of M2 onto him.

So I then had two meshes with almost identical appearance:

M2 using edgeloops to create body detail and M2Lo + a HiRes morph.

Turns out that:

The M2Lo HiRes morph was still "softer" than the M2 "edgelooped" one.

The M2 Lo HiRes morph took noticebly longer to render than the M2 "edgelooped" one.

The M2 "edgelooped" one showed up crisp and nice even in the preview, while of course the HiRes morph didn't show up at all.

(Because, yes, I of course switched off subdivision in preview)

Still, Poser has to to store and process that HiRes morph data somewhere.

*

In the end, the properly edgelooped M2 came out superior in every way.

BTW, I'm having 32GB ram on my Nitro 5 Laptop. And an i7 chip.

But I still don't like wasting these resources if I don't absolutely have to.

I think Poser thrived exactly because it was a "walled garden".

Because it allowed hobbyists to work at their own pace, shielded from the "dog eat dog" mentality of professional CGI.

And it still managed to earn a living for quite a few people.

:-)