"It's the equivalent of saying "Ashkenazy? He's not a real musician! Jeez, he doesn't even make his own pianos!!! Hell, he didn't even write the music himself!"

Not really. The equivalent is looking at the remix artists out there and saying "wow, they do good work... but can they create their own music or do they always sample from others?"

I am a total practical person. I use whatever tool I can that will get me to my goal. My clients appreciate this and it is a good thing on my own projects as well. Using a tool means understanding what it IS and what it is not.

The thing is that a lot of Poser work looks GREAT and it's awesome... but it is only so within an extremely narrow range of conditions. As soon as a poser figure moves, for instance, it almost always shows the lack of real animation options in the Poser rig itself (the joints and so on). Most of the amazingly photo-real textures only really look that good under fairly specific lighting set ups and so on.

The higher end folks I interface with all look at the great photo real Poser renders and go "that looks great, but can it move? Does the muscles flex? How about the clothing? How about hair? What is the rig like?".

The reality is that the top level guys are not threatened or jealous because it isn't all that threatening. A standing still Poser model under perfect lighting can look photo real. This is not news, and it isn't unique to poser. Hell, some of them could put one of Cath's textures on a model they had built themselves in a day or two and have it look that good.

From the other side I see some of the snobbery as being a reaction to this idea - the idea that if you have Poser and $200 of stuff from Daz and a texture maker you have somehow duplicated the flexibility and potential of something like Max or Lightwave.  It shows a fairly deep lack of understanding when folks say "well, they are just jealous that we do it better than they do!".

Some of them are just jealous. Some of them are serious jerks who just hate anything that isn't their favorite rendering product. But some of them are not jealous or threatened... they acknowledge what the Poser community does well.. but they know very well what the Poser community hasn't and can't do (yet?).

That's true inside and out of the Poser community (look at all the Poser people who slam anything that is attractive or any "perfect" female as being too "easy"). Hell, INSIDE Poser's little world you have people who attack others who just "buy and render". People who make custom morphs attack those who don't sometimes. When this is happening WITHIN us, when we will attack our own members who don't do anything buy "buy and render" then why are we shocked when the outside does it? It is only a matter of degree.

Again, I am not defending the ignorance or prejudice of many of the losers who attack us - but there is no reason to delude ourselves either. They may be ignorant and elitist, we don't need to add our own prejudice to the problem :)

When I see a great assembled Poser scene I think to myself "wow! good work!" and I have some idea of how hard that would be to duplicate. When I see an awesome render by some of the best modeler/render artists I am totally floored ... and it is more work. It means a larger degree of skill in a larger number of areas... and I am more impressed.

That's just life.