everyone has their own opinions.  what you see here is the result of asking us to provide you ours.  so view everything with what you want to acheive with your work in mind.

my own opinion: 

my  favorite texture artists are

• ExprssnImg
• Morris (& face_off)
• Dalinise
• Shahara

you'll note that all of them do textures for different figures.  personally, i don't find v3 fits 90% of what i want to acheive at all, but she does have the best support.  if any other figure was as well supoorted, i'd use that one.  not because v3 is that awful- she's definitely not.  it's that her main advantage is her support.  i don't use v3 without the capsces rayne morphs and posermatic's nude breast system.  or most of her international morphs (sold at daz).  and that doesn't even touch on her clothes, the hair characters which don't convert easily, and all sorts of other stuff.

that all said, take a look at this picture: Princess Orlana by maxxxmodelz
is the great thing about it her facial shape?  it's pretty standard v3.  the texture?  that's not what's incredible about her skin.  the thing is that maxxxmodelz is highly knowledgeable in the area of 3d in general.  he can put poser through its paces.  it's much, much, much less important to have the best model with the best texture than it is to know exactly how to light a model, set up  materials, seamlessly incorporate any non-3d elements you want, etc. 

david here is very anti-v3 and pro-posette, it's true.  but regardless of whether v3 appeals to you or not, there's a wisdom in the advice to not spend your money before you've learned how far you can take your pictures without spending any.  i know i wish i had.  it's harder to convince yourself to stop once you've started, and if the basis of starting is, "what looks best" instead of "what goes into the picture i'm working on right now," you can end up with even more well made stuff that you never use. 

there's lots of free stuff and tons of free figures, including aiko, v3, and m3 (and hiro, i think).  i'd suggest exploring it before spending any money.

here's  my own unpostworked neaena, the free figure based on posette available at planit3d.  see the full sized version- it's not that big and the forum resizing completely killed the full body portrait.  she uses the brown sugar texture by dalinise, awful eye props by aery soul (no longer sold), and a serious adjustment of face_off's real skin shader.  even after messing with it a while, i'm still not satisfied with the skin shader adjustments (though i'm quite happy with the displacement shader tricks i did), but there you go.  i know it wouldn't be any better for being unimesh.

an image's power is more about light, composition, texture, color, etc. than any single figure or product.