Quote - "But i just cant seem to find any decent tutorials." Try the "Learning Maya 7" series, which you should be able to pick up as a bundle for cheap. It will get you up to speed quickly. If you want to master Maya, you will run into a problem. You've got this amazing Poser Runtime, but you won't realize any of Maya's benefits if you're using DAZ characters due to the density of their meshes. Ultimately if you want to master Maya, you will have to give up DAZ characters and this will be very difficult thing to do because there's so much great stuff out there. Trust me on this. Jessi, James, et al. and P4 and earlier characters perform better because they average 35,000 polys or less. You could try Body Studio or the Greenbrier plugin but eventually you will run into the same problem. A whole new world will reveal itself when you begin modelling humanoids using subdivision surfaces. All of a sudden Maya performs less like a Cessna and more like an SR71. Why? You'll have a 1000 poly character that looks as smooth as a 72,000 poly character. You'll be very excited, you'll want to tell everyone about your amazing new headspace and (no offense to the forum) noone will know what you are talking about. I'm not a zealot, just sharing my observations.

Although everything you say is true, it is quite a path to making your own quality figures in any 3D application.  You have to master skinning, rigging, morphs, IK set up, edge-loops, and a myriad other considerations.  It is indeed an achievement - but one garnered with hard work and lots of time.

The appeal of Poser figures is that one isn't required to go through that gauntlet (whether considered laziness or not) to make characters for their work.  On one hand, you have a posable figure with 3000 morphs and several stores' worth of wardrobe provided by a myriad of individuals, albeit polygon heavy and proprietary in structure, and on the other you have the frightful prospect of trying to do the same all by your lonesome.   Might I state the obvious (as humans do) and say that something like Victoria 4 is not a single person's endeavor.  Such a complex beast is the endeavor of many dozens of people.  Great if you are part of studio - sucky for one person.  Name me a single OS comparable to Windows or MacOSX written by a single individual (hint: there are absolutely ZERO).  Why?  Because it takes hundreds or thousands of people working in concert to produce something of that complexity.  You make the analogy. ;D

Have a great weekend!

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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