Hi Arabesque and welcome :) I started with Bryce 4....and then fell in love with the "look" of the images created by Vue d'Esprit. Both of these are environment generating software for the most part, although you can do some modeling (some like Wappen make amazing things in Bryce). I held off purchasing Poser because my initial impression was that all it was good for was creating "nekkid people" :) But you can only do so many landscapes before you decide they need characters! I ended up getting Poser 5. So, I'm one of those "newbies" that jumped in feet first to Poser 5 :) It probably doesn't drive me crazy, because I have nothing to compare with, having not used Poser 4 :) As rogergordian noted, make sure your system can handle it if you go the Poser 5 route. It seems to work best in XP with at least a 1.7 ghz processor and 512 mb of ram. I say that, because that's what I've got :) Curious Labs I think still has the bundle special of Poser 4 and Vue d'Esprit for about the same price as Poser 5 by itself! If I was starting out, I think that's the route I would go!