Poser 5 can also use both BUM or JPG, but JPG gives much better results.
I highly suggest creating a bump map as well as a color map for your texture set. Many (all?) photorealistic sets forgoe the bump map on the belief that their texture is so realistic that it doesn't "need" one. While many certainly look nice without, I have yet to see one that isn't improved by adding even just a generic bump map. It helps take it from "nice render" to "wow, is that a photograph?" This is especially evident in Poser 5, which has better materials and rendering engine than its predecessors.

Male figures would be excellent. Some textures I have previously searched for and found very little available in are 1) realistic non-caucasian figures with special attention to hands, feet, and other color variation across the body, and 2) baby-faced characters of any race. A character set with a baby-faced head option that could be used on younger teens as well as one with more visible hair folicles/possibly stubble for older men and a beard option would be highly desirable to me.

As for poses, I rarely buy sets, but when I do it's usually for a accurate, well-research, specialized one. (Most recent purchase was a set of accurate ballet poses.) There's a lot out there, but much of it is same old same old. You might consider, as time allows, doing some accurate martial arts poses on the side; make sure you advertise them as being accurate, not more Hollywood-ish "basically looks like" stuff.

Message edited on: 10/03/2004 11:03