I've been watching the site for a while now and have been highly impressed with the work done here so i finally cracked and got P6 a few days ago. A few things have been giving me a headache and i've been back and forth through the manual but forgive me if i dont use proper jargon. Is there a way to keep the figure in its smooth shaded state while transforming its properties? it keeps switching to a blocked format whenever i turn a dial, which is screwing me up.

Also, if anyone could direct me to tutorials and/or places i could download things in relation to creating dark elves and angels, such as wings, skin textures, how to make pointed ears, hair and the like, I would be most grateful.

No doubt in time i'll have more questions to add, but those are the ones of the moment

thanks 

Try: http://mystic-nights.com/directory/index.php
It's a search engine. Type in what you're looking for (in the upper right) and it will take you to links for those items. Hours of fun. I use it all the time.

click the "full-tracking" icon to the left of the document window.

DAZ (http://www.daz3d.com/)
R'osity (http://www.renderosity.com/)
RDNA (http://www.runtimedna.com/)
3DC (http://www.3dcommune.com/)
Dreampaint (http://dreamp.club.fr/index.htm)
Baumgarten Enterprises (http://www.baument.com/)
HT3D (http://www.ht3dplus.com/)
Avalon Forum (http://www.avalonforum-geburtstag.de.vu/)

 
There's also oodles of free hair, but the best place to get started is with Kozaburo's stuff at Digital Babes.  (http://digitalbabes2.com/)  
 
Can post more if you like.  Just let me know.  
 

And a few elf ear morphs:
Ear Morphs by Diane - DAZ (SP3)
Millennium Elf Ears by 4blueyes - DAZ forum (V3-A3-H3-SP3-D3)
Aiko Super Duper Ears (1,2,3,4) by BorgBoy7 - deviantART (A3)

deviant ART (http://www.deviantart.com/)

Hope that helps! 

As a new user to Poser, here are some of the basics.

A picture to show you the file structure of a Poser Runtime can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/support/faq/index.php?id=94

Basically, what it boils down to in a nutshell:

If you are looking for a Character or a piece of clothing/shoes, in Poser you will find them in libraries/character

If you are looking for hair, you will find them in either library/character/hair OR library/hair

If you are looking for character texture addons, hair textures, clothing textures, you will find them in library/poses. Sometimes on the rare occasion, a merchant will package their textures so that they go into the "Camera" folder (.cm2 files). If that is the case then you can either apply them from there, or do what I do and change the file extension to .pz2

If you are looking for props, they are located in library/props

Sometimes you will find clothing and hair or shoes in library/props too, depending on whether the item is actually created and saved as a figure, or it was created and saved as a prop.

Figure items are "conformed" or "parented"

Props are parented.

If you are just starting, it's best to get started on the right foot. DO NOT just install files into the runtime! That will only lead to frustration because you won't be able to find anything, and not all files are packaged equally and land up all over the place.

Here is a link to a tutorial on using multiple runtimes.

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9060&start=0

Once you get your files installed, the next thing you want to do is to start making things :)

Here are some great newbie tutorials that will get you through the bare basics:

http://trekkiegrrrl.dk/tut1.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue2/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/issues/issue3/cover.htm

http://www.poserguide.nimprodaction.com/

http://www.canary3d.com/tutorial/3d-intro.htm

http://www.ebonshire.net/tut-posb/index.php

http://www.cooltuna.com/poser/poser-tutorials.html

If you don't have V3 figure, which is a popular figure, you should get it.  V3 Base is free at Daz3D right now

But if you want to change the look of her face and body, or use any of the available character addon packages, you need to buy the head and body morphs.

The head and body morphs are here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3008

Also, Michael 3, is available free right now too at Daz3D. Again, like Vicky, you need the head and body morphs to change the shape of his head and body. Those can be found here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3009

If you have both figures, you can get both of their head and body morphs in one package, here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3010

NOTE:  You can use the textures from the character addon packages without having the head/body morphs. 

If you want to change the look of the head/body and have the head/body morphs, do the following:

Install the head and body morphs. 

Locate the morphs you want to use in the "Poses" folder.

Find the set of morphs you want to inject IE:  Full Body, Full Head.... or just certain parts. 

Left  click the picture

Click the Single Checkmark at the bottom of the page.

Go to your Parameter Dials and start turning dials.  (make sure that you have the part of the body you want to adjust as the active one IE:  Morphing the ears, make sure you have the had selected.

Also, you can find many, many free morphs and textures for Vicky, and Aiko, and some even for David and Michael.  So you don't have to turn any dials if you don't want to.  Here are a couple links to get you started.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=55140

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=178490

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=105158

Using ready made character addons is pretty easy.   You need to have the figure and it's head and body morph packages installed.

Load up the figure IE: Vicky

Go to the Poses folder, and instead of looking for your morphs from the packages, look for th character you want to use.  Left click the image that has INJ, click the SINGLE checkmark at the bottom and the morphs for that character's look is injected into your figure.  No dial turning necessary.  Of course if you want to tweak the settings you can, but that's not mandatory.

Next locate the textures (if the package has some). They will be usually in the same library menu as your INJ that you used.   Left click the image for the texture and use the SINGLE checkmark to apply it.  If you don't like that texture, apply another one overtop.  You can even use a texture from another package.  IE: Morphs from package A  and textures from package C.

There are lots of sites out there that has free V3 character addons, and some that have for Aiko, Michael and even David.

Hair, clothing and textures are all figure/item specific, which means:

Michael 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Michael 3.0
Victoria 3.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 3.0
Victoria 2.0 needs hair and clothing and textures made for Victoria 2.0
Aiko needs hair and clothing and textures made for her.

Like figures, a texture made for one hair style can only be used on that hair style.

Clothing is also specific when it comes to textures. A texture for a pair of pants, won't fit all pants... just the pants that it was made to fit. Same with all clothing items.

Sometimes you can manage to  clothing item to fit another figure by tweaking of dials and increasing or decreasing the scale percent, but that doesn't always work. Sometimes a clothing item for Victoria 2 will fit Victoria 3, but their joints are different so posing a figure wearing clothing not made for it specifically will be hard.

Some figures can share items more easily than others, here is a link that will help sort that out:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2682279

There are 3 types of clothing:

Dynamic:  This is clothing that you use inside the Cloth room. It takes longer to work with and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it's not too bad, but the results are more appealing in that the clothing actually looks more natural instead of "posed and stiff".

Confroming- Non Morphing:  This is clothing that you conform to a figure. The clothing is made to fit the base figure.  If you change the shape of the figure you will also have to refit the clothing, which isn't always easy if there aren't any corresponding body morphs in the clothing.  Plus posing a character in positions where they are not nearly upright is difficult.  But many prefer this type of clothing over dynamic.

Conforming-Morphing: This is the same as conforming-non morphing, only there are morph dials that you can turn that have corresponding body morphs for easier fitting.  This is the preferred type of conforming clothing because it's easier to fit.

There are programs that can help fit clothing from one figure to another, or even from the same figure to one that has been "morphed up" using their morph packages.

The Tailor, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=677

Wardrobe Wizard (I use this one and it's great). It can be purchased from PhilC's site here:
http://www.philc.net/WardrobeWizard.htm

Clothes Converter, which can be bought here:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=3069&cat=131

Things like hair can be used across all figures just by tweaking the scaling and trans dials and then parenting the hair to the figure.

Poses are something else that can be used across most human-like figures with just a bit of tweaking to dig out a hand, or fix a shoulder.

These are all things I learned along the way and found to be valuable, so I try to pass them along because I know how frustrated I was when I first got Poser.  Hopefully you will find the information helpful.

Attached Link: http://www.wings3d.com

thank you all for the awesome links, i will be tinkering for hours lol... my emphasis is on male figures, any suggestions for add on's on those models? like is there a free michael or david somewhere?

michael3 and david bases are free at daz and as for the freebie add on textures/moprhs you will find that renderosity has tons of them in the freebie section ;) i'm sure others can/will post some that are off site.

okay i just checked sorry david base is not free after all...my mistake but V3 and M3 are =)

Just a note on the DAZ freebies, Michael and Victoria are free as a base only. To do any significant shape changes you'll need the head and body morph pack from DAZ as well which I believe are $19.95 each? (please correct me if I'm wrong) lol!

Remember to have fun with it and happy rendering! I can't wait to see your gallery, I love new artists :D

Alright, not sure i fully understand about runtimes...so i shouldnt just download items direct to the library? apparantly some files can get confused...so where do i go first to either create a runtime, or pull files into an existing one. Is this in the program itself, or do i have to go into it from the program files to install...i think my library didnt save the last files i downloaded direct from content, is there something special i have to do to save things in the library?

You will find that if you install/place all of your files into the poser 5 or poser 6 runtime that you will quickly become confused as to what goes with what because there is usually no continuity between the placed file folders from one library folder to another.

There are any number of ways to organize your runtime.

But first I'll say that I never unzip/install/place any files directly into my runtime until I've inspected it's contents and sorted it out in a way that I feel is organized for my needs.  I have a folder on my desktop called "Unzipped", which is where I unzip/install my poser files first.  Then I go and look into each folder and make sure the files are in proper runtime structure according to that diagram that I linked to earlier. If they aren't in runtime structure, I put them into runtime structure.  I also take the time to rename the unzipped/installed folders (not the folders inside the library folder, but the folders inside the library folders  (character, camera, face,  hair, hand, pose, light, props). Sometimes folders will be deposited directly into the library where the character, camera, props etc folders are.  Those are morph folders.  Don't touch those! 

As for organizing, you can easily use the one runtime that is inside the poser folder.  To do that:

Create sub folders in each of the Character and Poses folders named for each figure (V3, M3, Aiko, David, SP3, etc).

Then when you are installing folders, after you have inspected and sorted the files the way you want them in your "unzipped" folder, then move the runtime to the final destination.  Then go into each of the library folders and move what you just placed there into the proper sub folder.  This way you keep things for each figure in it's own folder for easy locating.  You can further break that figure folder down into sub folders inside by adding more folders called clothing, hair, shoes, jewelery etc.   Doing this you will know that if you are looking for V3 clothing the item will be inside the V3 folder in character, poses.

Hair, Poses and Props can be used across figure, so you can keep those separated by figure if you want, or just by theme/catagory IE: poses, furniture, weapons etc.

I've linked to a tutorial earlier on using multiple external runtimes, so I won't go into that here.

I started off just lumping stuff into my poser 5 runtime, and quickly learned that I couldn't find anything because nothing was named the same in any of the folders. So if I was using Outfit A, I didn't know where in the Pose folder my textures for Outfit A were.   I then sorted my files by figure and used sub folders to further organize the contents, and that worked well.  But I found as my runtime grew that my Poser performance decreased and it took forever to open the program each time.  So then I graduated to a few external runtimes. As I got comfortable with the files and program I gradually added more runtimes.  I have over 40 external runtimes now. Some are:

V3 Clothing
V3 character addons
D3 Clothing
D3 character addons
M3 Clothing
M3 Character addons
SP3 Clothing
SP3 character addons
Aiko
Mil Girls
Hair
Poses
Props
Christmas
Halloween
Valentines
Easter
Lighting
Backgrounds & Envirornments
Angels & Faeries
Mermaids
Vehicals

and others.

I know exactly where every single one of my files is located and can find things very quickly. 

My suggestion is rather down-to-earth. Before installing and downloading, you can play and experiment with the characters that come with P6. Getting to know the app itself a bit. For example how to pose, the effects of IK, the effetcs of light on your character, adding a background, creating a scene,...
Then attack the materials room, and finally start with the extra characters (that you can already download).

Really: you can drown your enthusiasm in the chaos of too many options. Better take it step by step. A few weeks of basics will save you many weeks of problems later.