Thanks EldritchCellar - the full title of the linked thread, "Modelling having poser smoothing in mind?", nicely encapsulates the first part of what I'm wondering about here, and your explanation is just what I was looking for.

I'm still looking at my renders to try and work out exactly what the second part of my problem is... something to do with the effect of the various light/shadow setups (including AO and IDL) in conjunction with bump or displacement, and how best to avoid those black artefacts near the meshlines. I need to try out a few things and do a couple of closer renders of the edges.

Smoothing groups is something I don't use - I think that's because a few years back I realized that if I'm using displacement then cracks between smoothing groups are almost unavoidable (and I'm a bit of a displacement fiend).

P.S. I like your Missus ! Just downloading her now...

(sometimes I really wish that I could convert the jumbled mess in my head into a couple of pictures and a few sentences, instead of the overload that I end up with.. :oS )

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The 3Dcheapskate (also available in DAZ and HiveWire3D flavours) 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.