It's great that they give away free stuff...and it's great that they are in business to make money, I understand that. What I don't understand is why someone would want to pay $60 for Vickie...or however much for anything they have to offer. Is that model really that much better than anything else out there? Enough to be worth that money? Someone enlighten me...and haven't people posted slightly modified versions of her to freestuff?

What you have to take into account here is the amount of time it takes to create a 3D model. It's not an easy task. The human form is even more difficult. That's only for the model itself. Add on top of that the layer of making it work correctly as a poseable figure. Sixty bucks is dirt cheap for a figure like Vicky even with all the minor flaws. I recently did some work for a company that had a pair of hands custom made for some product testing animations they where doing. The hands cost them over $2000 and they where glad to get in so cheap at that price.

That very much depends on what it is you want. Vickie is very different to Posette. The very high polycount in the face allows for some wonderfully realistic expressions and morphs, the added polys at the elbow and knee mostly eliminate the creasing/bending problems there. When she first came out, I thought she was gawky and awkward looking. But, knowing Zygote have a "money back if not satisfied" policy, I took the chance and brought her. Not a decision I've regretted. For close-ups of the face in animation she has absolutely no equal. And the way the figure has been cut (very similar to Eve) makes for much more realistic poses. And there have been modified versions, but they are all done in PCF (OBJAction Mover format) which means you still need the original Victoria from Zygote to decode and use them. Paul

OK, allow me to sound stupid for a minute, but where can I pick up Posette?

You're gonna kick yourself when you read this answer... Posette is the nickname for the standard P4NF nude woman :) Paul

Now i am confused. I always thought that Eve was the P4NF !! Who is Eve ? Ponytale

H'okay... P4NF is the Poser 4 Nude Female - otherwise known as Posette. Eve (Also refered to as Evolution) is a re-cut and re-jointed version of the P4NF done by Torino. Vickie is Zygote's Victoria figure (sometimes refered to as Millie) Millie is a modified version of Victoria available from the Props Guild Paul

I'm sorry Paul to ask, but where can I find "Milli" from PropsGuild? Regards Chris

proceeds to kick himself in the head (don't think it's impossible, I actually did it once when I started martial arts...)

Millie is a PCF file (which means you need OBJAction Mover and Zygote's Millie before you can use the figure) and can be found on Textures, Page 9 at the Props Guild. And my thanks to Jaager for a superb figure Paul

I own the Victoria figure :-) Thanks for the link, still checking it. many thanks from Chris

...and the one not mentioned above is Polly. She is a Posette body/Vickie head creation of mine, available in PCF format in Freestuff (Polyette). What's great about her? Well, she has Vickie's face posability and has tons more clothing than Vickie, because she uses Posettes clothes :o)

Whoa, apologies Warrior - I forgot Polly :( Paul

No biggy, Paul. Now if you forget "Paul" the next time around, there is a problem! L

eqplayer- Gee, if you ever tried building a model like Vicki, and doing all the joint parameters, and moking 10,000 corrections along the way, you would see that $60 is a great bargain. Vicki also has the advantage is that she is a STANDARD, and items are apearing for her, both free-stuff and for-sale items. Not much every came out for Eve, for example.

The difference between that $2000 figure and the $60 figure is one of scale. Vicky is sold to a mass market. You get no guarantee that the next guy won't be producing work with a figure that looks like yours. You're not unique. With the $2000 hand you have a custom created hand that is also more than likely optimized for some higher end work than Poser. Completely different markets and you cannot compare them fairly.

Ok, so everyone pretty much agrees that Vickie is a good deal...her advances and her versatility. But what about a comparative male version? When I got poser I was interested in the female form and making striking images with them. Now I've turned 180 and am more interested in creating animations with men (fighting and action and such). What about you guys?

Zygote is, as we speak, working on a Millennium Man. There's also WarriorDL's "Paul," and RenaPD's Old Man who are figures made using elements of existing Zygote figures and the Victoria Mesh, trying to get the Best of Both Worlds.

so what is the best model available for full download that is still free? or are the p4nude males and females what they are all based off of?

Yep. Every female figure so far (except Vickie/Millie) is based on P4NF or in a few cases, P3NF. Eve (Evolution), New Eve, Eve V3, P4WWG, Real Woman, Nene, SaRenna, Mimi (Mobius), Mimi HiRes, Veth, Veth HiRes, P3 New Joints, Mimi New Joints, Ultramorph, Ultramorph 2, Supermorph etc, etc, are all P4NF or P3NF with lots of morphs and/or adaptations of different kinds. Several exist as both P3 and P4 figures. Many of them are combinations of P4/P3/Eve. They all have only one thing in common: the head. Morphs for the head work on all the above mentioned figures as far as I can remember. Except for Vickie/Millie, of course. Clear as mud, huh? :]FishNose

I have an aversion to spending money so I just use the bog standard P4 female most of the time for clothed females and Eve for nudes because she doesn't do as many strange things when she'd posed. I also like the Kim figure for an oriental woman and the figures from Thorneworks for teen type figures. He provides them as fairies but you can twiddle the dials to remove the fairy features. Also, Poser Factory has a good range of free figures including Nene in various guises. Apart from the cost of Poser in the first place, all of these are free. Maz

arcady - It wasn't meant to be a marketing comparison but an example of the amount of work that can go into a 3d model. It's true selling a figure on the mass market has the potential for generating much more money then selling a model to a client for their exclusive use. But there is a considerable amount of risk going to the mass market. If it 'goes hot', big bucks, if not you're screwed. It's a very similiar situation to selling software. The road is littered with all the creators of spreadsheets, word processors and database programs that never clicked. At least Zygote had the sense to realize that they where asking too high of a price even for the mass market and corrected their mistake by dropping the price by a third. Smaller profits for sure but enough to pay the developers, overhead and stockholders. BTW The hands where built specifically to be used in Poser4 by a company I can't name because of the NDAs.