hmm well i would like to add my two scents: many skilled people DO model their own 3d characters and items, many DO draw/compose their own textures; now seeign what deepth of expertise and mastery it takes to make DECENT 3d items/chars, or dcent textures, do they ever have really the time to afford to learn some other basics and skills regarding their modelling/3d render software package ? i woudl guess that many modellers would lack the knowledge to use their own items artisticcaly on in real use job, i would say, compared to someone who did not learn to model but learn for example abotu lights, posing, facial expressosn and such. i guess Poser is unique in its own because most of the time you use premade elements of many kinds (light set, poses, items, characters, textures) yet given the sames "bits" and tools, we could see huge difference between even a RAW render of a poser beginner (must begin someday :) and someone who learnt a lot working on Poser. Poser comes with its own share of aspects and skills needed to be mastered and learnt, at various scale and extent (JCM, displacment map, textures, reflexions, materials, shaders, posing, lights, etc), skills that too DO take time to learn. the REAL artistic value in Poser can be found in this fact: Starting with all the same tools (same characters, same textures, sam software), look at how many different raw or postworked renders people can achieve, how many different styles. I saw a couple of artists here on OR who really took out of "basic" mayadoll looks and expressiosn i would barely had imagined this young character to be able of... so painters use brushes and cavans, infographists use stylet and tablet, sculptors use chisels, 3d artists use modeller as their tool. We have a range of tool that usually fall under "result" of work with "tools" for other people. When a good working character is the "artistic" result of the use of a modellist's tools, it becomes a tool for ourselves to use in a different kind of job. many time i was asked by non poser aware people about my work, it was hard to explain.. and when i had to admit that no i did not MAKE the character, NO idid not MAKe the clothes, NO i did not DRAW the textures (well, for some i did :), they stared at me strangely and disgusted :) then i simply brought them at home, and put them in front of poser / runtime installation and my paint software and i told them: oki, i did nothing myself then, so you can do the same.. go for it ! :) strangely enough the results were.. embarassing :)