I've decided to start with "square one," and go from there. It might be nice to interject a bit of history, and explain the benefits and drawbacks of each character. You might recognize "Default Guy." He's the default character loaded by Poser "out of the box." Did you know he's a Poser 2 Low Resolution character? Did you know you can pose him, but he has no capability of facial expressions (morphs)?! Why does Poser 4 default to a Poser 2 Lo-Res Character? Why does he already have hair and clothes? I don't find a Default Woman. We have the Casual Guy, Casual Woman, Casual Child. Then we have the P4 Nude Woman (Posette) and P4 Nude Man (Dork). Just where did their nicknames originate?! I'll put this character tutorial together and post it on my web site. I'd appreciate any input or history here! Thanks. Ron

p2 guy loads fast & is easy for beginners to work with. I presume most non-beginner users change their preferences to eliminate loading this guy. The terms posette & dork arose during P3 and came into common usage at Willow's PFO in an incarnation prior to her moving the site here, so AFAIK, the actual origins are now lost.

also see the post by Jaager last year that gave a brief history of the Poser nude fem development.

Thanks for the input. I've bookmarked that thread, and will read later. I'm getting ready for work now, darn! I've put together this WIP of a comparison between the Casual Guy, Dork and Mike. It's kind of funny since I wanted Dork and Mike to be wearing some kind of "swim trunks," to show enough of their body and be "decent." Poor Ole Default Guy looks out of place. This is a hard scene to do. Apparently my computer is taxed, since I get a sluggish response when trying to move the camera, etc. I'll fiddle more with this tonight probably. Ron

I tell you what...don't delete those damn...low Poser character...things go strange in Poser when you do.

Damn. Default Guy has really big hands. To illustrate the differences between P4 and third party stuff, I'd have given dork some P4 hair. Just my 2.

Hi, I like the default guy, he looks a lot like the characters you get on Cisco packaging :) later jb

Without the plastic hair, Dork dosn't look so Dorky. :)

Thanks for the comments. The goal is to give all the characters as much "the same" as possible. That's why Dork has the P4 version of the wedge cut, etc. I did a comparison of Posette, Vicky and Stephanie. All of them had the same hair style, and the same "thong." I did this because many people had suggested it in the past.

You know, as long as you're doing a sort of "evolution of a poser character" kinda thing, it might improve it to show exactly how each character improved over the previous. For instance, Posette's still my favorite, but the fact is, there's a lot that Vicky and Stephanie can do the the others can't. And going from the old guy to Dork, you might want to put a texture on Dork, and maybe abuse Mike's muscle dials. The way that poser figures have evolved is by and large in utility. You can do things with Mike that would have been unheard of back when old guy was still in use. A running dialogue of the improvements in the newer models might be a good thing to add and demonstrate. I have no doubt that you lack the ability to do so. Paul P.S.: You might even consider tossing some of the Pro Pack figures into the mix. I've never really used 'em, but I've seen work in the galleries that did.

Entropic, you have an excellent idea. I've been thinking along those lines, but am frankly stumped as to how to put it all together. It might be necessary at least to contact Curious Labs and DAZ3D. Other people in this community have apparently done something like this. I recall one artist put together a graphic showing a wonderful depiction of the evolution of the Poser characters from the primitive Poser 1 Dork, on up. I surely wouldn't want to tread on that person's work! I'm terrible with names, so I apologize in advance. I could do a search I suppose to find out?! One difficulty is that I'm trying to think of something to submit to the Renderosity Magazine, as my first "break" into the computer publishing world. There are certain limitations concernin submissions that I'm trying to understand. I do believe 7 images is the limit there. Somehow I need to find the proper focus and approach here. *** I just had a potentially silly thought. I still have Poser version 1 (by Fractal Designs) on 3 floppies. I never figured how to use that version. What would happen if I installed it on my Windows XP machine and tried fiddling about? I'd probably be as lost as I was years ago! *** The ProPack figures appear to be lowres cartoony figures. I played with one, and used the poses designed for that character. The poses wouldn't work. That was the end of that little escapade. Ron

Seems to me she was really the link between the P4F and Vic. I think "Posette" came about pretty early. There were other schools of thought: "poser chick" next in line, as I recall, and others even less memorable (and/or polite), but Posette won out. "Dork" is self explanatory--like a high school nickname that sticks forever as soon as it's said.

That's a rather unflattering render of Steph there Ron. Vicky gets the spotlight again I see :) later jb

The original: The Poser ONE guy!

OH my God, that's the most frightening thing I've seen in a long time. Thanks, Legume!

Legume, Your Poser 1 guy looks rather distorted. The arms and legs are proportionally both too long for his torso/head, and his wrists have been through an extruder. Otherwise he would have served the intended purpose... which was to give artists a model they could pose as reference for their drawings. Carolly