I do not want to upset anyone but I am really surprised that so much here appears to be black or white and no grey area.  For example the idea you either model or you puchase or do neither and stay in the past.

I buy a great deal from venders but as my time is limited I usually ask two questions.  1. can I model it myself and 2. How long will it take me.  As I am yet to fully retire, I am in the lucky position that I have a pension and still work part time (I semi retired early after I was made redundant)  beacuse of this I will sometimes buy items that would take me a week to build if the price is right.  Yet I also purchased many for the digital tailor tutorials as I am keen to learn new skills.  Two years ago I had never modelled anything and I had never opened the material room.  Now thanks to many on this forum I play in the material room on a daily basis.

So in my case there is time to learn and I have a will to do so, others may not have the time or the interest to do so but if they enjoy their 3D renders, so what.  I for one can never see me creating my own figure, not because I don't want to but because I doubt I will ever own such skills or have enough time to gain them.  I admire those that do have the skills I am happy to use such figures if they suit my ideas and I don't mind where they came from.

I also do a lot of fantasy and Sci-Fi work that does not mean I do not want reality, or more accurately, I want the figures to look believable.  

Looks like I don't like either the white of black camp so I will stay in the grey camp, although I am not sure even just how grey the camp is.

 

 

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.