Hey Guys

Yeah I thought I shed some light on this subject, as I said I do a similar thing here at work. Its basically getting the work done in a quick and effective way with to much time being wasted.

Also, we delete history on the posed characters and get rig of the rig. This way the pose is baked out, then you can either artisan it or better still Zbrush it, getting those nasty areas back to where they would be, then once you render it, at least you dont have to guess how the light will fall on certain shapes ie; the shoulders

LAstly, again you couldnt do this in animation for obvious reasons, so for extreme poses you would have to build two or more rigs, as they did for The Matrix movies...that way you have full control over your joint deformations

Jay