Can anybody please direct me to a "for dummies" level tutorial on the basics of Poser and Daz?  I am a vaguely competent artist and a reasonably fast learner, but have ZERO experience or familiarity with these programs.  Of immediate concern, I have purchased Poser 7 and several Daz variants, including Victoria 4 and related morphs, etc.  BUT I have no idea how to get them all to work together, and can't seem to find any instructions to help me.  Any suggestions?

Do you have DAZ Studio as well as Poser or just Poser and some DAZ content (the figures and so on)? If you don't have the DAZ Studio application you should be asking in the Poser forum.

With DAZ content, you run the installers (if you are using Poser only you can skip any files that have names ending DS) and point them, by default, to the folder you installed Poser in (so that would most likely be something like C:Program FileseFrontierPoser 7 on Windows - though under Vista and Windows 7 installing to the Program Files folder can be a problem - in that case it's better to create a new folder elsewhere and install to that, but I'll ignor that unless it's needed. For Victoria 4 and her morph sets (and Michael 4 and his) you need to let the installer run an initialisation routine before you can use the figure; other content doesn't need that. The readme should open at the end, and at least tell you which of your library folders to look in for your new items.

There are many tutorials available online here at Rendo and other places for Poser, but your best bet is to have a look at the Poser Forum.  There are links at the top of the page (on the Poser Forum)  to several excellent tutorials,.

This forum is the "Daz Studio" forum, not Daz content such as models.

RHaseltine --

Yes, I have Daz Studio as well.  And, to complicate matters (probably), I'm working on a mac.

As far as I can tell, I have everything downloaded, expanded, and sitting in one common folder, but the only thing I can seem to open is the very basic version of Daz Studio.  Nothing else is working and the error messages I get when I try are like Greek to me.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

you unsit/packed the file, did you run the VICE installer for each of the packages?  If you did where did you tell them to install, that should be your runtime directory.  2nd part in DazStudio / Poser you have to have it see your runtime folder as well.

Using a Mac is not an issue at all. I have been using Poser since the very first version came out on my Mac. If you installed poser, it should have installed (by default) to your Applications directory (Applications->Poser 7). Do a Shift-Command-A shortcut to get to your Apps directory.

You should see a Runtime folder located within that Poser 7 directory. This is where your content will usually go. If you installed it elsewhere, you need to tell Poser to look in that directory.

With Daz Studio, it's the same thing. The app should have installed to Applications->Daz Studio, within this directory is a Content directory (which itself has it's own Runtime directory.

Look in there directories for content you just installed or reinstall into on of these depending on the app. (both can also use content installed in other Volumes/Directories, but that would further complicate things for you right now) For example, I have content spanning 5 different Hard drives currently.

As you may have already done this and the instructions mentioned already or not, one question I wish to ask is:
Have you done a 'Search for Content' to include the additional items into your content database?

There are good video tutorials at the following sites.

Geekatplay = www.geekatplay.com
They are free to view online or can be purchased at reasonable prices.

Youtube = www.youtube.com
In youtube search engine just type in "Daz Studio".

Maruut Software Training = www.softwaretrainingtutorials.com
These are professional quality and as such $$Expensive :-(
(my company purchased the AutoCAD video so this is how I know about this site).

Also check out Daz's own tutorial section = www.daz3d.com/i/tutorial/0?_m=d
This is were I started to learn at the magic 4 letter price tag $FREE ^.^