That's generous - thanks! I'll keep an eye on my inbox :)

Very exciting news - PML 2012 is still the best extra for Poser I ever bought, it allowed me to bridge Poser and Zbrush pre-GoZ, and I still use it as I find it can be more stable than GoZ on occasion. Ready to buy the update as it sounds like you've added a lot more to it - I'll drop you an email!

3doutlaw's advice is spot on ...

Render settings + light settings + material settings = render quality (technically at least). It's the number of different variables, options and how they combine that can make things tricky.  IMO persistence is the most important quality for 3d!

There are a couple of pdf's in my free stuff - not tutorials as there are many other ways of approaching rendering etc (and some of them will be better) - but some of the info might be useful. Eg. the default render settings are not great, far better to get into the manual tab and learn about the effects of the different options - in the long run you'll get better results faster.

I see two issues here - first, light leaks at 90 degree corners on geometry and secondly black smudgy splotches. I found a workaround for light leaks - see post here http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?74474-Backlighting-in-Poser at RDNA. That looks like Jack Tomalin's Classic Deco set, so if you can't alter the geometry I'd suggest trying a couple of high-res square primitives placed behind that area and facing out - haven't tried this myself but it may be worth a shot.

Black splotches - if you increase Irradiance Caching in the render settings to 100 it should (if I remember right!) dispense with the IDL pre-calc pass (ie. no pass with red dots). Firefly will include IDL in the main render pass using brute-force computation which is the most accurate method (ie. fewest possible artefacts) but is also slower - a lot slower. Whether this is a viable option depends on the speed of your machine, the complexity of the scene and your patience!

Finally if you're using an emitter in the scene, how big is it in relation to other objects? Smaller emitters produce more splotches than large ones if I remember correctly.

Great image btw Paul!

Monkeycloud - any image adjustment in Photoshop can be applied to a selection, it's not limited to filters.

So for Paul's needs here I'd paste the zdepth mask into a new Channel, then load selection, refine mask if needed, and work on a copy of the layer (toggle visibility on & off to see if the chages are working). Then just a case of experimenting with levels, curves, brightness etc.

Also easy to add painted elements like smoke etc this way too.

That'd be because I didn't post it, sorry - it is here

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/bbeye

Are you intending to re-texture and set up new shaders?

anthanasius had some shader examples up here -

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?65396-SSS-on-Eyes

Snowsultan's Seam Guides for V4 (should be on V4's product page at DAZ) are invaluable if you intend to make your own textures, or adapt any existing ones (for your own use).

Bagginsbill had an eye prop too; worth searching the forum for BBEye with his username; it's also on his free site.

Product wise, if you have Blackhearted's GND4, Anastasia or Shae then well worth looking at his textures (GND4 has replacement eye geo as well). Syyd's Vanilla Sky is also good and has just been revamped for P9/2012 at RDNA, and Saint-Fox's Living Doll on here has template maps and masks for V4.

Personally I think that for close-up realism modeled or dynamic hair eyelashes and eyebrows would add a lot. I don't know of any though and haven't got round to experimenting myself yet.

Attached Link: Poser blog with video

I can't disagree with most of what you say - yes, the dynamics as it currently exists definitely needs a complete overhaul. Hair too - carodan has got some amazing results but most comments I've seen have been around it's user-unfriendliness. 

If by 'behave like Genesis' you mean improved bending, then AntoniaWM is the best example IMHO of what can be done with Poser's weight-mapping, plus there's V4WM and MichelleWM. If you mean sub-d then that is something Poser can't do (except with snarlygribbly's script).

I bought PoseMagic back in 2010, and found it a useful product. There are though a number of posing dials in the Body for Alyson2 and Ryan2, and I understand it is possible to create new dials using Dependant Parameters - so adding the same kind of functionality, and going beyond just posing, can be done by users.

But what I really I have to respond to is this -

"It seems to me that the Poser team is not saying "Hey, let's completely rethink this hair room piece of crap"  but rather "Okay, on to the hair room, how can we tweak this so that it seems like we've worked on it without adding any actual functionality?"

Take a look at the link above, scroll to no.5 and watch the (very hokey) video - that's the Poser dev team. Not a lot of people, but a significant number have been with Poser for years, and I know from experience (being on the beta program) that they do care about the software.

Being a fairly small team there is obviously only so much they can do and it will be a case of prioritising. They also have to maintain backwards-compatibility (now, personally I wouldn't be too upset if they sacrificed that for new functionality, but that will be a very minority view - could you imagine the reaction from the Poser community if they announced new features but that all previously-purchased content was now unusable? ouch!). I have seen posts by various members of the Poser team both here and at RDNA (plus ThinkCooper and TNPorter moderate the Official P9/PP2012 Forum at RDNA), and Steve Cooper has said that he does keep an eye on the forums.

What I'm trying to say (in a very convoluted way) is that while I would agree that Poser has some real limitations and can at times be very frustrating, and while I know you're not making a blanket statement, I would have to disagree with the notion that the people who make it either don't know or don't care about the things that need improvement.

From my perspective as a user, the step from PP2010 to PP2012 gave me more accurate lighting, true SSS, improved Morph Brush, GoZ and (more indirectly given that I've not learned how to rig figures myself) better bending. The Add-On Framework which was developed by SM in collaboration with Pret-A-3d has already given rise to DSON and the Octane for Poser plug-in, and Pret-A-3d should be releasing Reality 3 in March (which will provide the bridge to Luxrender), so that is also a significant addition. Personally I reckon the last version was a good step forward. Unfortunately being under a legally-binding Non-Disclosure Agreement with SM, like all the other beta testers, means I can't say anything about Poser X - Coop collects scalps, y'know. Just colour me excited.

PS. SM's blog of 15th Jan here - http://blog.smithmicro.com/tag/poser/ - is asking for suggestions for names, for a male and female, I can't think why … but there aren't many so far, anyone got any ideas?

Another option is http://www.cgskies.com/

They are charged from 25 euros each but are full sky panoramas in HDR, EXR, TIF and JPG at up to 15,000 pixels in width.

IDL stands for Indirect Diffuse Lighting - so, as has been stated, there is no specular component. As hborre says, it is equivalent to using a fill light in a classic 3 light setup (the others being a main and a rim or hair light), so a very simple setup would be a figure in a surrounding environment (like a sphere) plus a couple of normal lights. I've got a couple of demo's (not tutorials!) of a basic setup in my freestuff which could give you some useful info.

AO stands for Ambient Occlusion; it adds a soft shadowing effect to objects that are in close proximity as if the scene was evenly illuminated (ie. an overcast day). IDL includes an occlusion effect but it is superior in that it changes according to the scene lighting (or, that's my understanding at least). So IDL doesn't need AO on lights or materials - at best it will simply be ignored.

Hope that helps.

I would say there is no ideal - depends entirely on what you're using it for!

As an example, say you want to view an image on screen at 1000 pixels at the longest side - rendering twice as large and then reducing the size in an image editor (plus doing stuff like sharpening, adding contrast, altering colour etc to taste) can make a render appear much more detailed (advice I picked up from one of blackhearted's pdf's some years ago). If you're going to add painted effects like hair, smoke etc it also makes it far easier if you start with a large render size.

I think Fabiana also has light sets for sale, and I know her promo pages usually have tips on lights and rendering. The look of a render will depend not just on the texture, but also the way it is set up in the material room, the scene lights and render settings; so the simplest way to get a similar result to her promos would be to use her light sets with her texture sets, and read all the documentation thoroughly.

IMO the OP's question can be reduced to a simpler one -

How do you take a digital model like V4 and give it the appearance of a dynamic, believable, life-like figure?

It doesn't matter whether the goal is realism or illustration, or even what the media is, the problem/goal is exactly the same. When I look at an image with V4 I and start thinking things like 'wow, nice morph' or 'that temple looks chilly, she'll catch cold dressed like that' then it may be a technically good image but it's missing something, and that's where I'd place everything I've done with Poser. So the question that I should really ask would be -

How do you take [polygons on a screen/lines on a page/paint on a palette - delete as appropriate] and arrange them in such a way as to evoke an emotional response in a viewer?

For me the image here that gets closest is wimvdb's. My initial reaction was along the lines of 'what's she thinking' followed quickly by something like 'holy cr*p that can't be V4' .... 

mysticeagle - much prefer the second render, except that I find the reflection in the eyes a bit too strong. Maybe slightly more defined creases as well, especially the laugh lines? I like the character though!

wimvdb - very impressive quality - can I ask what card you're using? Also, is it possible to alter the RGB values for each texture in Octane? To me the hair has a reddish cast to it which looks mismatched to the scene, I'm wondering if it's possible to make it more neutral. I think I read that Octane has a white balance option but not sure if that's implemented in the plug-in yet - then again, I haven't calibrated my monitor in a while!