Quote -   Thank you for a substantial and thought provoking post, Peng.

 Suffice it to say, you speak of many of my concerns.

 Here’s my take on the Photography/Poser analogy.

 I have friends who are professional photographers. Indeed, I have just begun studying traditional Black and White Photography with one of them.

 What Poser is, is the equivalent of a low-end digital camera in the hands of a person who doesn’t know how to use a regular camera. Everything is quick, inexpensive, immediately importable into Photoshop, and ultimately disposable.

 As a learning tool, that’s fine. Go for it. Shoot your neighbor. Shoot your dog. Shoot your new collectable Star Wars miniature. Shoot for the moon.

 But no one who actually knows jack hoot about photography will actually look at your work as anything but the adventures of an amateur.

 “What, because my camera only shoots 4.2 mega-pixels? Is that the problem?"

 No.

 “Oh, it’s because it’s digital, and not traditional processing.”

 Strike two.

 “Oh, I get it...I should have invented the camera, and developed the printing process, and made friends with hoity-toity artists...."

 Thank you for playing. Please accept this 32-megabyte memory card as a consolation prize...

 The problem is that people do not know how to approach a scene. Instead, they grab a credit card. The lighting is off? Oh, well I’ll head over to ___ and grab a set there.

 The figure looks wrong? Must be the morph package...Maybe the Glenda 2 figure has more forgiving joint parameters.

 The other day at the DAZ forums, there was a thread about sketching. I was struck by how many people said that they did not sketch scenes beforehand.

 “It’s too hard”

 “I can’t draw”

 “I figure messing with the machine is like sketching”

 (I am grossly paraphrasing here)

 Here’s a quick clue-in. A sketch doesn’t have to look “good”.

 Ever see a building under construction? There are wooden stakes everywhere, orange traffic cones, ugly yellow scaffolds, and big green dumpsters, not to mention the ubiquitous blue porta-potties, in a veritable sea of brown mud...

 Looks pretty nasty. That’s because it ISN’T the finished building.

 Now what I just wrote was loaded. Tell me true, folks, couldn’t you see that scene in your mind’s eye?

 Of course you did. That’s what a sketch is. It’s an arrangement of simple symbols to work with in order to create a scene.

 Any man, woman or child in this forum could create that construction scene on scrap paper with a half dozen crayons..

 But here’s the kicker...Almost no-one actually does.

 Instead, people immediately dig through eight gigs of runtime, of seven and a half pages of Freestuff, DAZ specials, or Content Paradise to find and purchase these items.

 And as a result, with everyone using the same materials, from the same vendors, with the same camera and light settings, the pieces become virtually interchangeable.

This is one of the most important points of what Peng has written here, Study this closely.

 

 

Hmmm. 

In the 1980's, my secret ambition was to become an illustrator, to draw like the great old masters. But something was lacking in my brain that kept me from being able to visualize my characters' complex poses.

I knew what I wanted to draw, and I knew what was great when I saw it, but starting from a blank page just never worked. *

So what about folks who can't do that sketching thing huh?

"That texture set that seems just right and that light set looks like it might do the trick. What DM set do I use this time? And that background I stashed here. Ok, set this in place...oh yeah...this pose fits what I see in my minds eye....Control-R. Hey....that looks just like what I was trying to do. I'll look at the dials later, but for right now let me post this and see what folks think."

Is this a bad thing? 

So YOU are a good writer. (Yeah we couild all visualize your scene) Let's see the above in a sequence of Poser images?

The point of my previous post is the Poser Landscape is not what it used to be.  If you know the history of computers and real hackers you know what I mean. Stuff when from being available in a desk drawer to highly-prized top secret-uh-uh-aint-gonna-share-it intellectual property. There are a lot more TYPES of users and we will see differing TYPES of stuff done.

Poser is an application that can be used (and has been) professsionally to my favorite John and Jane Noobie spitting out their version of NVIATWAS. There is  going to be stuff that will drop jaws to stuff that will want to make you poke your eyes out. Nature of the beast.

One may fork our $$$ to have the family portrait done or those wedding shots, but that candid pic taken of Gramps loosing his dentures when we surprised him, or that shot made with the throwaway camera of the baby snuggled with the cat on the living room floor will be just as precious to the one taking those pics than the pictures done "professionally". 

You've perhaps have come up with a great idea. We can consider the stuff that looks canned, obviously from a newbie or someone who has yet to push themselves as "That person's SKETCHES". Nothing wrong with looking at folks SKETCHES now is there?

Of course that person may consider what they've done as ART.  
-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-

*This is a quote from "A message from Larry Weinberg" that can be found in the Poser 6 Reference Manual.  Here's this kicker. There are a lot of folks who may be in the same boat as Mr. Weinberg. Are we all not glad he was a programmer? 

Not all Poser users are coming from a Professional background where the "pre-process" is a part of the workflow. Not all Poser users are going to want to go beyond where Poser puts the props, render and GO! 

"Few are agreeable in conversation, because each thinks more of what he intends to say than that of what others are saying, and listens no more when he himself has a chance to speak." - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Intel Core i7 920, 24GB RAM, GeForce GTX 1050 4GB video, 6TB HDD space
Poser 12: Inches (Poser(PC) user since 1 and the floppies/manual to prove it!)