Maybe I'm just odd...but within my first month of using Poser 4 (the first one I ever used) I had a pretty ok, basic, knowledge of what I was doing. Then again, I'm a very firm believer in trial & error. Yeah...I wasn't nearly as good as anyone else, but I could at least pose, clothe, and light a figure/scene. However, it was several months before I learned anything about textures/maps/trans maps/anything in the material options menu. I'd suggest reading a few turorials, becomming friends with someone who knows what they're doing and bug the hell out of them (hehehe), and just screwing around. www.3dlinks.com has some really good Poser tutorials. I probably didn't help much, but I hope that you find something I said useful. ^^ Jay P.S. MoxeyH said: "Those characters are a must-have for Poser and are really sort of "standard" for the more realistic clothes/hair/accesories. I'm not trying to plug any particular site or make you spend a lot of cash, but I just want to emphasize that I probably would have lost interest in Poser early on if not for the cool stuff I bought to really sort of put together artwork that I really enjoyed." Ohhhh yeah...Poser and Posette just don't cut it AT ALL (unless you're going for that Barbie and Ken look). It's possible to make them look really good, but it...takes a lot of time and mapping knowledge...I started out (once I was introduced to them) with DAZ3d's Victoria 2 and Michael 2. I now have V3 and M3 and plan to get SP3. They make a world of difference in the realistic aspect of your renderings when compaired to Poser and Posette. So once you get a very basic knowledge of Poser, I'd highly suggest looking into getting one, or both, of them. ^^