dancineyes Hi! Welcome to the Poser Community TJ's suggestions are sound - start with the basics. Little of what you mention would be considered essential for good art, and that little is different for each artist. My best recommendation is to dig into Poser out of the box, master it, or whatever portions exite your imagination the most. If you find yourself getting very skilled at some aspect, post some of your work,tips,or efforts here. You may become skilled enough to start selling textures, poses, characters, etc. With skill and talent, you may make enough to start buying the products you desire, or by then you may have better alternatives of your own. Be patient, take your time; to some users poser is all about making pretty pictures to express a thought, feeling, event. For this Poser out of the box has tools aplenty. Try playing with lighting, textures, camerawork. Everything you talk about to buy is the result of someone perceiving a need, applying themselves, developing a skill, & creating something that never existed prior. (this next is exerpted from a post I made to another newcomer recently who was looking for info) Look at the top of this page,there's a link called tutorials. Click that. Most of the tutorials you'll see have something to do with Poser. Scroll to the bottom-right corner of this page, you'll see a column of links headed "Poser Top 15". Click on any of them. Look for tutorials on each site. Look for links to other poser sites, look for tutorials on these. A lot of poser sites may not have Tutorials. Many, Many, many do. Look for Poser Arcana, Look for ShadowCat's site, Look for Morphworld, Etc., etc, etc . . . I could go on typing sites with tutorials all nite, but I can't give you any better suggestions than to just start here, then go clicking around the Poser Webbring. That's how I learned most of what I know. Same for many others you'll hear from here. There's a tremendous feast awaiting you, dig in! Happy Rendering! leather-guy