It also depends a lot on what you're wanting to do. If you're making morph targets or props and clothes, etc., you need a modeling program like trueSpace, 3D Studio MAX, even Amorphium can be helpful. If you want to create photorealistic textures, you need good, high resolution photographs and a paint program like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. Or, if you're a really good artist, you can hand-paint textures for them. Sometimes the realism is achieved directly in Poser, using lighting, natural poses, good transmapped hair, etc. Some people prefer to export their figures out to other rendering programs like Bryce or Vue d'Esprit in order to integrate them into a 3D environment. Those are just a few ideas. Melanie