I see so much good advice here, I thought I'd throw this out there. Whats your very best poser tip/trick for the relative newbie? Mystmaiden

Attached Link: Whats your very best poser tip/trick for the relative newbie?

All hair can be used across figure with a scaling of the dials. All poses can be used across figure with a little bit of tweaking. Multiple runtimes. They make it so much easier to find things and keep organized. I used the link above to learn how. Our Dr. Geep here also has a tutorial: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2075638 Also, Poser is a very complex program to learn and trying to take it all in at once can be very overwhelming. So my tip would be to concentrate on learning one thing at a time. For example...master doing a basic scene such as a single figure with clothing, hair, shoes, premade lights, premade pose, and render. Once you are comfortable doing that, move onto tweaking your poses and then making your own poses etc. Most of all, if you have a question, ask. There are so many wonderful and helpful people here and you can learn alot from picking their brains :)

re: using hair for all figures - please also remember to parent the hair to the head, besides doing the scaling and adjusting. (hmmm, "scaling" sounds like the hair is going to the dentist, or someone practising the piano...)

Set up your workspace the way you want it. Get the tools and windows set up on your screen to suit your taste, set "full tracking" if your computer can handle it. Then change the lights from the default Poser "Jungle" setting to all grey. Delete the standard figure from the studio so that Poser doesn't have to load it each time you boot up.

Once you've done that, set your preferred render and movie-output options. Then, go to Edit/Preferences and click "Set preferred state". Poser will now open with this set-up whenever you run the program.

For Poser 6 newbies, install P6 Service Release 2 (SR2). Kills bad bugs dead.

Don't try to learn everything at once, concentrate on one part of the program at a time then move on to the next when you've mastered it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=2063281

Also, go to Daz3D.com and grab Vicky 3 for free!

Go to the freebies here at Renderosty and download clothes, jewelry, poses, character sets, and just start playing.

The best tips I can think of: If you haven't a background in art, take the time to learn about lighting, composition and anatomy. Even a little understanding of those subjects will improve your images dramatically. If you learn one Poser skill, learn lighting. If you're planning on learning more, learn how to pose. This is where a basic understanding of anatomy will help no end. Learning how the body moves is the key to effective posing.

1. As you work on a scene save progressive pz3 backups, eg "MyScene-01.pz3", "MyScene-02.pz3", etc. There is nothing worse than loosing hours of work because Poser has crashed, or pz3 has become corrupted. 2. Use the Memorize and Restore options, Memorize > Element (Alt+Ctrl+E), Memorize > Figure (Alt+Ctrl+F), etc, to set restor points. Then if you make a chainge and decide you don't like the result, you can easily revert to the previous state. 3. Learn and use the Poser keyboard shortcuts, it will save you a lot of time. 4. Once you start to feel comfortable using Poser, learn to edit Poser library files (pz2, cr2, lt2, etc) in a text editor, it takes time, but eventually will allow you much greater control and understanding of Poser. When you ask "how can I do that?", you will offten be able to find the solution your self. 5. Don't be afraid to ask questions, even if you think they may sound silly. There are lots of people in the forums willing to help. We all proffit by the shared knowledge in the forums, and an answer to your question may help me, or give me a new idea. Do try to make your questions specific, and include as much detail as posible. Do take the time to acknowledge when an answer has been helpeful, or to report when a sugestion did not work. Others besides you can proffit by your feedback, and it can be very discouraging for someone to spend time answering a question, then not know if the person ever came back to the thread to read the answer. Always state your Poser version, the answer to a question may differ depending on the version. 6. Once you have the Poser interface setup the way you want save a UI Memory Dot, this will let you quickly restore the user interface if you make an unintentional change. For similar reasions make a backup of these files: Poser.RSR preferredState.pz3 Poser.ini Restoring these files will offten fix problems if Poser stops working corectly, and can save you the trouble of a full reinstallation of Poser (these are P4/5 files, not sure if they exist in P6).

........The best time to save your work is just before a system crash......................You can run your car as many miles as you like without gas but the same does not apply to oil.........................If it aint broke don't fix it. If it is broke don't waste money buying a replacement, odds are what broke the first one will break the new one also...........Do not try to teach a pig to sing. You'll just end up getting muddy and it will annoy the pig.............Before you criticize a man walk a mile in his shoes. Then you'll be a mile away and he'll not be able to hear you. Plus you'll have his shoes........

My best tip?!?! HAVE A HUGE BANK ACCOUNT! CUZ POSER'S ADDICTING!!! LOL!! Seriously.....all of Geeps tuts are great! ~Nancy~

Wow!! Absolutely great tips here!! Printing this one out for sure. Thanks!! I know I am absolutely guilty of wanting to learn it all at once. I have no training in art..what little I've done so far has been by instinct, a bit of research in that area, definitely in order. So far lighting has been my nemesis. I love doing faces but no matter how good a face is, without great lighting, its just a face. Multiple runtimes. I would Never have thought of..and since I simply Must have everything I can get my hands on, I've been making myself crazy Looking for the things once Poser is open. I also never thought to change the workspace... Saving my work.. well found that one out the hard way but I think I am still not saving often enough. Back ups for settings..wonderful idea! As far as goodies for Poser..I could spend my life savings and still find things I want..so many talented folks doing such great things out there. I'll find those tuts and print them out. I seem to do better that way than switching from screen to screen trying to follow. Releasing Miss Piggy from her singing lessons.. I should have Known that would Never work out LOL Mystmaiden

Geeps tuts will teach you loads. Don't be afraid of anything. You won't break Poser by playing with the Advanced view in the Material Room, so don't be intimidated by it. Same goes for the Hair, Face, and Setup rooms. Find all the freebies you can handle. They are a good place to get started. You will be buying stuff very shortly after, but you will learn loads from the work others have already done, and it helps to get your feet wet. Buy Practical Poser 6 by Denise Tyler (a regular here named Deecey.) It is a fantastic book. I have been using Poser since version 4, and the book is giving me all sorts of insight to things I never thought of. It is written for beginners, but takes you into advanced concepts quickly and smoothly. Post here whenever you have an issue. As has been said already, people here love to help. It usually sparks ideas for others too. You will often see the word "bookmark" in the thread. This is someone who sees a topic they want to follow and is setting the e-bot to send them an e-mail when someone posts something to the thread. When posting though, please make your subject as clear as possible. Don't make your subject something like "Help!" Write something like "How do I make a surface shiny?" in the subject line. You will get faster responses if you are clear on your topic. Plus, the people "in the know" will be quick to post an answer. Okay, I repeated quite a bit, but I think they are all good ones. Oh yeah, and anything PhilC says is practically gospel. ;-)

Attached Link: http://myweb.cableone.net/geep/

Attached Link: http://mystic-nights.com/directory/index.php

also..Poser doesn't have to be that expensive. Look in Freebies here, and elsewhere (click on the sponsor, sometimes you'll find more stuff that way).
'Conform to' is how you fit clothes onto characters. Remember that each character usually has clothes, hair, textures, morphs, etc., specific to that character. As stated previously, hair can be faked, but sometimes poses can be used (though fingers have strange directions sometimes afterwards).
Another thing to consider; if something 'pokes out' through the clothing, you can turn off 'make visible'..which will vanish that annoying cellulite while leaving the svelt curves of the clothing
You can import pictures in as backgrounds, which can save you loads of time moving props and characters (quick rule- if you want to put 2 people in a picture, move one away [I think you can grab the hip, them move along x or z, unless the feet seem nailed to the floor, that's probably more complicated than you want to get at this point..;] but if they move, they won't do something called 'crosstalk'; where a change made to one figure goes on the other figure..;)
anyway, if you do use background pics, study the lighting direction and color, and try to match it in your Poser render. I swear at..er, by it..;)