Well I'll play along

shaders .procedural shaders ,materials what ever there called all app's have them. you can buy Poser shaders in the store. but there no where near advanced as SL's .no ones are. google "substance designer materials" n your see what I mean.

you paint a 2D texture you mix nodes or sliders to make procedurals ,no painting. you can google "substance designer nodes" "poser nodes" "blender nodes" to see what nodes are.procedural Sliders are better then nodes ,nodes are to slow n aggravating. I avoid nodes like the bubonic plague. there like running a race with flat tiers. if you haven't guess yet I really hate nodes.

you can use nodes for more things then procedurals also. blender has nodes for a lot of things.

you can turn any procedural in to a 2D texture for Poser.

most app's if you Boolean or change the meshes vertices # it breaks the morphs. I'm not sure where your going with your character but I'd make the final mesh first .then morph map etc etc.

most make low polycount characters by sculpting a high polycount character for the normal and then retopology it for the low polycount version.

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