*'...though with poser you are cheating somewhat. but who cares?
purist's.'

*Cheating how? Isn't this idea of using pre made content being a cheat a bit purist in itself?

Way back before the first photograph had been developed, sometime in the 1650's or 1660's, a painter called Jan Vermeer was making paintings using a 'camera obscura'. This was a device that focused light from a real world scene onto a semi opaque screen as an upside-down image (apparently the first reference to this technology comes from the 5th Century BC!) It allowed the painter to inject a realism into his pictures that had  previously been rarely seen. Vermeer is acknowledged as being one of the 'Masters' of painting, and yet some have criticised the use of such devices as the camera obscura as being in some way 'cheating'. 
I wonder what such puritanical folk would make of the use of 3d software to make images, let alone the use of pre made content. It must be cheating.
Another example from art history. Many painters throught history would operate in studios or workshops with sometimes dozens of apprentices. These apprentices would perform such preparetory work as mixing pigments and oils into paint and stretching and priming canvases. Often they would even do much of the painting work itself, which was then finished by the hand of the master himself. 
Guess that was kind of cheating then.

The idea that all the elements that go into making a creative work have to be entirely made by one individual in order to somehow be valid is rediculous.  Computer hardware, monitors, software, content - they are all fantastic tools made by someone else for creators to use to make other stuff like images and animations. If you're using any of these tools, then by the type of argument made by the purists, you're 'cheating'.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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