Dale B posted at 7:46AM Tue, 10 March 2020 - #4383091

I collect new figures because I consider them resources, actors in whatever I am animating. There are very few people comparatively who can take a figure and morph it enough to where its difficult to tell it was 'Figure X'. Dial spinning doesn't really change that (newest example is LaFemme/LaHomme. Despite the gender change, you can tell it is the same mesh). You have to choose carefully, of course; some 'actors' are only good for face shots, some head and shoulders, etc. due to how the creator worked the topology and rigging. I'm a writer and movie maker, so my needs are quite different from the people who concentrate solely on still images (of course I do that too when creating a character and storyboarding). It was why I paired Vue with Poser; I could animate the figures, then import it into a Vue scene and render there, giving me a non static natural environment, or a more flexible internal render (at least until Cycles was added to Poser). How well the figure bends when a motion file is applied, and how much tweaking is needed are more vital than a lot of things stills need, since you can hide a vast number of sins behind some dynamic clothing

A caveat if I may "emptor" here, please, I originally bought my first version of Poser (2) for use in animation. At that time, there were no "Legacy" figures. There are now, of course, and no I don't collect figures, but I do like variety. That's why I like the Legacy figures. For me, at least, they're easy to pose, and most of them come with their own wardrobe, small though it maybe. I mention this because Legacy figures are great for background shots and building crowd scenes in Poser. As anyone who's ever tried to build a crowd in Poser knows, that poser does not have instancing, so every new figure you add to a scene, even if you duplicate it, slows Poser down considerably. Legacy figures are also usually lower polys than the newer figures, so I like to use figures like Posette, Don, Dork and Judy as, say, background diners and waiters in a restaurant scene. I once had a ballroom scene that slowed my Poser down to a crawl. Don't forget, it's not just the figures that slow poser down, but the props as well.