wow, people are sure touchy in this thread.  MikeJ, since Stepdad neither named anyone nor specified who, if anyone, was calling people idiots.  i think the point was more general, like different versions have different options, and different options will suit different people.  i don't think you should take it as being "lectured" unless you really just want to fight.

xantor -  again, with no photoshop?  the only mec4d stuff i've seen is either P5+ and photoreal, or a lower version and worlds less realistic.  again, great for P4 but the differential is just huge.  and i know there's a lot of stuff she does by hand.  i've never seen anything in the poser gallery that was P4, photoreal and not tons of postwork or pre-work (like using a texture with burned in artifacts and then using a setup that works with said artifacts).  as i said, i'm a heavy photoshop user, and i've got nothing against it.  but right now i've got a few setups that give me decent results with any figure, any texture, etc.  the less postwork i have to do, the quicker, because a i can reuse a shader but fakes are picture specific.

it's like my "Reaching for Life".  because it was done in P6, i could combine a procedural marble i already had based on a free RDNA  shader, RSS, and a blend across multiple objects  based on absolute space posted by AJAX.  in P4, i would have had to do 2 different renders before i even started doing my postwork.  and without the ability to tile textures in Poser itself, i would have had to make several marble textures, while making sure they're all the same scale. 

it would have been even better to have true SSS and GI for the skin and marble.

as far as i can tell, node systems are pretty common in 3d apps.  so far, all the one's i've researched seem to be much more complex than Poser's, but that's a matter of opinion and i haven't actually tried most of them.  i've just read about them, seen screenshots, and looked at tutorials.  i'm actually impressed at how much versatility Poser's system allows with a comparatively simple interface.  

and i never thought interface design was easy.