No probs, Melanie. ;) Just making sure disinformation didn't propogate - it's the only thing known that exceeds the speed of light in forums. grin And there's plenty of it about.

"I've been using Poser since the mid to late 1990's, coming in on Poser 2, so I've seen the leaps and bounds of improvements to the figures since then. The P2 figures didn't even have lifelike faces at all. You had to paint faces on them in a paint program to make them look like anything. Poser 3 was a major improvement!"

I did as well: I started out on Poser 2 in '95? '96? - not long after I first discovered it. I remember meticulously painting features on Poser 2 texture maps. My first efforts at that were rather horrid. ;)

Best answer I think to the origional poster's question: "Is it really necessary to buy V3, Freak, Michael3, S3, etc... ?" is....

It really depends on what you want to do. It depends a LOT on just what it is that you want to do:

1. You just want to learn the ropes, make good images, learn to do conforming, texturing and morphing, and possibly make the odd freebie or whatever available, then "No." Posette and Dork [and Don and Judy] are perfectly adequate and more than. You can do fantastic imagery with nothing more than the basic figures. Sean_Martin and Hack_Worthless and any number of people are proof of that by virtue of their work.

It's not the tools, it's the weilder. Period. You have the skill, you can do whatever you need to with whatever comes to hand.

And you develop the skill with work, not toys and the latest gadgets. ;)

I'd say personally that you're better off learning the skills with poser and dork, because you have to work harder at making them look "top shelf", and you learn a lot more useful skills that way than you do with the push-button-packages.

But not many people in these forums are going to tell you that, because they didn't learn the hard way.

2. If you want to keep up with the latest fads and be able to buy and use all of the latest store items and textures and freebies - "Yes". You need the newest and latest because that's all that the merchant communities support. You realy almost have to follow the latest Daz trends there because that's really all the bulk of the merchants support.

That's going to hold true ad infinitum: Daz releases Vicki 4, and support for Vicki 3 will drop to almost nil except from a rare handful of merchants and freestuff providers.

3. Same goes for merchandising: the non-Vicki stuff is niche merchandise, and it has limited markets. If one wants to be a high selling merchant, one tends to follow the newest Daz releases - Vickie, Mike, Freak and whatever.

Building a market for non-Victoria items as RDNA, Sixus1 and others have done takes a lot of work, consistent quality, and a lot of creative marketing, and the Poser markets tend to run along the paths of least resistance and easiest sales.

4. You want the "Ooohs and Ahhs and Yer a GAWD!" comments in the galleries, oh hell yes - you need to follow the fads. ;)

OR you need to get good enough that you make the fads, and everyone follows you. grin

Figure out what you want out of this, srrdude, and then your question is going to answer itself. The tools you need to use and master are going to be contained within the parameters of the goals.

And no matter what anyone else tries to tell you: there is no wrong choice to pick from the above. There's only what works best for you. ;)

Free advice. Worth ever penny.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell