The V4WM (weight-mapped) option is free but, as already stated you do need V4 in the first place.  If you do decide to go down the V4WM route I suggest you also download Outfitter as this will allow you to adapt standard V4 clothing to the weight mapped version.

The products to have a little care with, other than Python, are figures, textures and lighting.  Most products will work but Poser 2012 and Poser 9 added Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) to improve skin textures and there were some major changes to the lights.  A lot of the newer figures for V4 come with textures for earlier Poser versions and SSS textures for use in Poser 9/2012.  Lighting for earlier versions of Poser will work in Poser 2102 to a degree but one route is to learn the basic of lighting and build your own sets.  Same can be said for textures/materials they will work in Poser 2012 but may need to be tweaked.  Skins textures for example often used tricks to fake SSS, not something you want in Poser 9/2012.

 

In short, if you stay away for Genesis, unless you are aware of how to make it work in Poser, almost anything will work but you need to do a little research to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck.

 

 

 

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.