OK, let's see how clear I can be. 2D computer art is pixels in a flat array which represent 3D space, in much the same manner as a flat painting on the wall can represent a window into the artist's world. Take the Mona Lisa. There is a background behind her, but we cannot see her profile or what is behind her no matter how we tilt the canvas. A 2D computer image, say a painting created in PhotoShop, is the same way. Flat. It may be richly textured, but it only exists in a single plane. 3D computer art is different. There is a mesh of points in space. These points are linked by lines and planes (known as polygons). A cylinder or a human formed out of polygons can be turned around, or stood on its head, or squashed along an axis. It is a mesh which is morphable, twistable, turnable. A 3D scene will have several elements. Usually there is a ground plane or some sort of landscape. Occasionally there will be a backdrop for a sky or whatever. Then the various buildings, animals, people, clothing all get added to make up the picture. These are all nothing but numerical coordinates in space lined by a formula or three. However, the human eye recognizes the pattern. Any of these elements can get replaced or changed at any time. Example: If DaVinci had decided that Mona Lisa's smile was irritating, it would have been easier for him to start from scratch than to replace her portrait with another lady, and, if he did repaint, he couldn't go back without damaging the canvas. We can save off the offending scene (in case we change our minds) delete the woman, and replace her with another model with a nicer smile. Because these are 3D models, they are affected by lighting. In fact, rendering in 3D is more akin to tabletop photography than anything else. You can set up the scene, place the lights, choose the focal length, and take the picture. Total control. Back to the Mona Lisa, instead of the blueish hazy lighting, in 3D you can experiment... what will she look like in a romantic sunset? moonlight? underwater? film noir with sharp shadows? The mesh is 3D, so changing the angle of the light will make a noticable difference. Now suppose that the smile really IS irritating. With a mesh, you can make her frown, or laugh, or raise an eyebrow quixically. You can imagine that she needs to scratch between her shoulder blades and twist her arm back... or add a cat to her lap! Whatever. You can give her expressions and movement. That is what posing is all about. The basic human model will enter the scene in a "T" position, and our job is to make it look lifelike. For creating 3D art, there are several programs which all do slightly different things, in a vast range of prices. There are programs for making models from scratch. Carrara is one of these: you get a choice of modeling methods (polygons are only one way to define a form in space), you can build, and render. I think Animator and Wings are both free. There are programs which are known for making nice terrains and skies: Bryce, Vue d'Esprit, Terragen. You can build in these programs, but they traditionally don't do people that well (they do import). Poser for a long time has been alone in the class of reasonably priced software for posing and animating the human figure. It is also among the easiest of programs to use, so there is a vast hobyist market. Lightwave, 3dStudioMax, Cinema4D, Maya are all quite a bit more expensive (thousands and thousands of dollars and a steep learning curve), but they do more than modeling: they can landscape, animate, render, whatever. Their final renders will often be superior to what Poser can do or what Bryce can do... but at 20 times the cost, I'd hope for some difference! Poser 5 has some extra lighting features such as volumetric lighting and a way to fake caustics, but I haven't played with that yet. It does have both regular render and ray-traced render capabilities. In any version of Poser, you can make cell-shaded effects like anime, and there are sketch render presets for some fun effects. Poser comes with a basic library of people, clothes, hair, animals, props, but no landscapes or buildings. However, you can buy or make or find in freestuff plenty of elements to add to your scene. Poser 3 still had painted-on clothing, but Poser 4 and above have separate clothes and hair so you can make unique figures. It's like dressing a doll or puppet: start with a nude figure, put the clothing in place, conform it to the body (so that when you pose the figure, the clothes come along with the posed limbs), add the hair and props (parent them to the right places on the body like hat on head). Once your figure is dressed, you can move it around. It is already boned (or rigged) so that body parts will stay together (you don't want the fingers flying off if you move the arm!) and so that if you move the hand the rest of the arm will follow in a natural sweep. With Poser, you can animate, making your own mini-movies. You can add sound... with an additional program called Mimic, your Poser people will sing or talk with expressions. On the CuriousLabs site there is a free tutorial just on Posing. It is fairly massive, but the author is perhaps our best expert on making poses. With Poser alone, you can create and render scenes with people in them. The rendering engine was designed to make people look good. If you are not going to use people at all, but want to play with fractals or landscapes, then I'd suggest other programs. There are many additional pieces of software which help, but you only need certain of them for certain tasks. Example: if you want to paint your own textures, a uvmapper and a paint program are needed; if you don't want to make your own, then save your pennies. Besides the manual, which is how I learned the basics, there is a FAQ for Poser (look up in the banner for this section), and several tutorials. Dr Geep's excellent series of "primers" in these threads are most helpful. For Poser 5, Stewer's site has a FAQ. The 3d-axis video for Poser 5 is well-recommended. And, you can always ask questions. When doing that, I suggest putting the topic of the question in the subject line, so the right experts can jump in with help. Another idea... you can look in the galleries and see something of what a program is capable of doing. You can find artists you admire and check to see who they admire and what programs, models, etc., they used. And remember that we were all newbies once, looking at the back of a software package, and reading the descriptions, and asking questions. Carolly