Quote - a) Money? Bah. You're looking at a very cheap bastard here. I spend only on what I have to, really. I've gotten by on DS3 (the free version), GIMP instead of Photoshop, an old copy of Rhino3 (which I bought way back in 2004-5 or so), and even older copy of Vue d' Esprit 5 (bought that in 2004).   Hardware? I only recently bothered to move my main CG bits from a 2004 Mac Dual G5, and a cobbled-together 2007-vintage Core Duo Hackintosh... to a brand new Core i7 laptop that I saved for over six months to get. Meanwhile, Wings is still a decent free modeler, Blender is even better (also free, but frustrating), and there are mountains of free figures, morph kits, scenes, and etc for your rendering pleasure.

 

b) spend some time with what you do have - I think you'll suprise yourself. In spite of literally knowing the underlying code, I've only recently gotten around to playing with shaders in D|S (and damn it's fun!) I see you've begun to do much the same thing (this is a good thing, y'know? :) )

 

PS: See that ugly-assed chap to your left? Mike 2, a freebie hair kit ("Kabuki hair" if memory serves), a free clown face texture that I modified the hell out of in GIMP, and an ancient "subdivided surfaces" freebie body texture kit with a home-grown texture ground out in GIMP. The rest is render settings in D|S and a quickie background whomped out in GIMP (I know, like the umpteenth time I said that name, huh? :) )

 

I own Poser 8. I am retired Navy and bought it at the Navy Exchange for $90, with no sales tax ( a perk of the Exchange). I have GIMP 2.6, Blender and Magix Movie Edit Pro 16, which I also bought at the Navy Exchange for $60.

All in all, I am running dirt cheap with what I am doing. I know you can get good results if you work at it. I am working at it. As you stated, I am messing with shaders and nodes now, I actually created a prop using the morph tool (I made a surf board and used Ryan DEV as silver surfer once). But I have miles ahead of me to cover. I have barely scratched the surface with Blender. I may try Wings later if I can't get Blender right away. At least then I will be doing something to work toward my goal.

I have set myself the ultimate goal of making my own movie, with several smaller goals along the way. I bypassed the first one out of frustration (learn lighting), but I am going to go back to it before I go any further with Poser. But I met others, such as learning to pose, learning to animate, walk designer, talk designer, materials room, cloth room, and hair room. My next big thing is Blender. I want to start creating my own characters and using them along with the Poser 7 and 8 characters for this movie.

And at the same time, I am devoting an hour per day to developing the story. Goals for that are creating the backstory for my 5 main characters, back story for any other characters that may interact with the main characters, time lining the main story I am going to tell, and the first 10 pages of script. Once I get that far, then it's on to finishing the script, and the rewrites.

I have a plan in place and in action. So once I start heavy into script, no more movies. I already don't watch tv. All there is there is the same old news and reality (sic) shows. So I will be learning Blender, aquiring Wings3D, and script writing each day. Having the job that I do makes this a bit easier to accomplish, since I am either at sea, or sitting in a hall all day long with nothing to do but my own personal business... as long as I stay put.

So with all that... I am not so discouraged, because the pros have set the benchmark. I just have to get close, not on the money...

If I had a nickle for ever time a woman told me to get lost, I could buy Manhattan.