Quote - My main hobby is Flight Simulator as said (perhaps I can convert some of you...) but I just wanted to see what you could do with Poser on there - just wish I had the Poser skills like you guys to go with it :sad: - I'm strictly a newbie at the moment...

Flight Simulation sounds like a blast!  I love to flying. Just wish I could afford to do it more often!  Not sure I would like being behind the controls though!

So far as Poser goes, it's a daunting program with a huge learning curve.

It took me something like 6 months before I actually managed to do a render. I'm not talking about an image that was good enough to render, I really mean using the render area for anything! 

I was so frustrated wtih Poser when I started because I couldn't do anything in it. I read the manual and found it too technical. It didn't address using bought things such as character addons etc.  I didn't even know how to put clothing on the figure for the longest time. And once I figured out how to do that the figure kept disappearing because the manual gave wrong instructions regarding which "check mark" to click when adding something!   Finally when I managed to get a figure and clothing into the scene I had no idea about applying textures. To me a texture is a material and should be in the material area, not under "pose", and once I did learn that the textures were in the pose folder, I couldn't find anything in there because I didn't know about file organization and everything was just jumbled in there.

I can't even begin to count how many times I gave up on Poser: uninstalling it and then reinstalling it again a few weeks later.

I was asking all kinds of questions, but because I didn't know the terminology, or how to ask my question in a way that others understood, I was getting answers that weren't really helping me.  And all the tutorials I was being linked to seemed that you had to have some prior knowledge of Poser to do them. I couldn't find any really newbie tutorials to show me how to add a figure, add clothing, add a texture, a hair etc, and finally do a render of the scene.

I was gaining knowledge, but it wasn't making sense to me because it was like trying to read random pages of a  book that had been thrown all around the room and trying to piece together the story.

Finally VooDoo over at Daz took pity on me and got me in ICQ and spent some time with me walking me through the basics of creating a pretty character that I could render. I swear after that I was in ICQ everyday sending him links to new things I managed to do! He must have been rolling his eyes each time!  LOL

But after that it was little steps all of the time. For a long time I stayed in my comfort zone and only did "barbie dress up", but then I started to take interest in other things because "barbie dress up" got boring.  

I'm still learning things all of the time and still have tons and tons to learn.  But the people here are really nice and help me learn.

My advice is to not try and learning everything all at once.  Work on learning one thing and once you are comfortable with it, then add something else.  Trying to learn it all at once only leads to frustration.

I remember how frustrated I was with the lack of newbie information out there when I started, and that's why I put together an essay of information that I wish I had available to me back when I first started.   It will all come together, I promise!  :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi