My thanks to a friendly Poser user and comics producer in Japan, for telling me about the standard “Dusk by Ocean” IBL AO that ships with Poser 11.
As you can see here on this Mavka demo I threw together, this gives a subtly shadowed effect when using the real-time Comic Book Preview. Slightly akin to one of those padded plastic-vinyl ‘puffa-stickers’ collected by kids. But it doesn’t immediately scream ‘3D model’ to the viewer.
It’s very easy to apply, just two clicks. It seems at first glance to be a possible replacement for subtle blending-in of a shadows and/or AO layer using Photoshop, on certain types of de-grunged and somewhat pre-tooned characters. It works less well on a default character with grungy clothing and skin meant for Firefly.
Although one would ideally still want to have such a highlights layer for blending.
Along with the gamma-changing script that ships with Poser, which can be used to lighten-up dark grungy clothing textures, this seems like yet another piece in the puzzle of efficient comics production with Poser.