I'm gonna disagree with soulhuntre-- nothing personal involved. There was a significent learning curve for me in Poser 5-- the Material Room. Which even with a killer tutorial on it at PoserPros, still I dont know all the ins and outs of it. Poser is the only 3d proggie I know at all well, though I worked a bit in Bryce. It took me all of one one month to get proficient in Poser 4-- I think that's the shortest learning curve I know of. That's proficient enough to make something quick easy and have fun doing it. I really enjoyed using Poser 4-- with SnowSultan's Ztoons method, I don't know if you really need P5's toon shaders. I'm in Poser 5 because I have way too much stuff for Poser 4's library management. Here's one other unmentioned reason for using Poser Artist or P4-- you will be able to import pz3's that's standard Poser scene saves into Daz Studio [its in Alpha now, set to go into beta in the spring and looks to be a killer renderer] Poser 5 is not supported in D/S-- yet, maybe never. D/S is free. Emily