Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity”
Erik Christopher Zeeman

I keep this pinned to the corner of my monitor at work.  As a technical photographer and graphic artist I strive to master both.  

Quote - total bummer.  they gotta push their cloud stuff, if they got any.  cloud is where it's at.  e.g. cloud version of poser, $50 per month.

Don't you go promoting short sighted rampant greed.  If they go subscription based I'll be back to Daz3D in a second.  Adobe and Lynda.com have lost mine and my companie's business because of this.  All subscriptions do is drive potential customers to the pirate sites.     

Quote - My primary interest has always been largely in creation of realistic architectural scenes

I'd like to pique your interest with the following links to collections of amazing architecture..                                                                                                               http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_details.aspx?id_product=466143. (follow any of the links on the right side for details of each room).                                                           http://www.asnaghi.com/   (I really, really, really wanna make rooms like these some day)

   You might also check Jack Tomalin's stuff over at Daz3D.  He makes beautiful and highly detailed interiors.  I use his 'Baroque Grandeur' set for everything.

The workflow from Blender to Poser has also been cracked.  Just ask.  

Welcome.  There are a few modelling questions posed but I imagine that folks usually scour the more established Blender-specific forums.  Here, the emphasis is on model building for use in Poser & Daz3D.  What kind of modelling do you favour?  Is your avatar one of your builds?  

Just found this thread and while reading the discussion followed the link to DinoRaul's page.  Despite having searched for some early human models (and finding nothing) I was thrilled to see his Homo Habilis.  I'll be sending him an oh-so-nice email begging for a few others from our family tree like Sahelanthropus tchadensis or the ever popular  Austrolopithecus afarensis. 

  Is anyone here an anthropologist by chance?

As someone who's almost 60 it does my heart good to see older folks learning all the 'new fangled' computer stuff and being an active and engaged part of the community.  The young imbecile I work with thinks that everyone over 50 is a dodering old poop who sits on the front porch, slack jawed with spittle dribbling out of the corner of his mouth ensuring that the neighbourhood kids stay off of his lawn.  Thanks for proving him wrong.

Quote - Never been a lot of $$$ in a hobbyist anykind of business.
There's millions in movies.
There's MILLIONS in games.

While doing some research for an economics paper two years ago I found the following numbers, ...the movie industry made 8.5 billion dollars US (and yes that's BILLION!), the gaming industry made 8.3 billion, and coming in right in the middle was 'adult entertainment' at 8.4 billion dollars.     The economy may stink but it's obvious from the steady growth in these industries that folks are turning to other forms of entertainment.  The 3D hobbiest is no longer a burgeoning industry; rather it's a steadily growing pastime with Poser leading the way (arguably).  In the Poser NNTP usenet group (yes, folks are still in the newsgroups) we frequently post 'Poser sightings' when someone notices a Poser made animation on TV or the net.  This demonstrates that folks are starting to use it commercially.  I've even started making short animations to use at work for our aircrew training packages.    This is BIG...and Poser is at the forefront.  Someone here posted recently that there's a million folks registered with the forum...doesn't sound like it's shrinking at all.

Quote - But, man, oh man, Blender and Poser are a combination from heaven.

The sculpting tools are what I had always been looking for, the morph building is as easy as they come, the UV mapping does exactly what is required.

I had a vicious battle with the skulpting tools before beating them into submission.  Surprisingly I found that the retopology tools where stupid-easy and worked the way one would want them too.  I bought a small tool for retopo that didn't work too well but don't mind supporting the community. 

Quote - The reason I persist with SketchUp is the large selection of free models on 3D Warehouse.  Otherwise I would have given up a long time ago.

As for Blender.. I've tried repeatedly to learn it over the years, but the program and my brain just can't work together.  It's a shame because it looks like a  great program and you sure can't beat the price!

I have to admit that I also use sketchup on occassion for the same reason.  There must at least eleventeen billion free models available. I only use it to export (as best as possible) to obj format.

Blender was ridiculously idiotic to learn but since the 2.5 release it's now (mostly) human usable.  Because of this the user base has exploded.  There's still some sore points but it's definately hit the big time.  

Quote - I have resolved the issue. There was some grouping issues that needed correcting. Thanks :)

I'm very interested in the gory details of the problem.  I find that one can learn as much from things that don't go well as from stuff that does.

I've gotta agree with vilters; Blender is brilliant and free ( http://www.blender.org/ ) and there are a billion (yes, I actually counted them) free tutorials available.  Youtube has 731,896...no make that 731,904 videos.  I struggled with Sketchup for many months before moving to Blender.  You might also find this blog of use ( https://blendertodaz.wordpress.com/ ).  Read the comment under 'On Hiatus'.  It details the Blender to Poser workflow.

Please don't give up in frustration, take a deep breath, recite your mantra ("I love Poser, I love Po...") and ease into the Poserverse slowly.   You're obviously smart (your writing is a hoot!) enough for this, it just takes time.  Read everything, fiddle with it a bit, read some more, fiddle...and so on, you'll gradually pick it up.  Most everyone here has gone through the same process.   I'd suggest you grab a bunch of the free stuff before investing money.  Hit the 'freebies' forum for many (many, many, many...) links. Relax, have a cookie and welcome to the nuthouse.

Quote - Don't forget CGCookie, they're got a seemingly very comprehensive tutorial base for Blender.

CGCookie also lets you download the material for offline use and you're own archive.  Very enlightened compared to Lynda.com who have now gone to a subscription based system where you can only view the lessons online a la Adobe apps.

....and you might also be interested in Blenders internal video editor which also does advanced motion tracking that works better then Adobe After Effects.  This is a little gem that few folks seem to know about.  It's only downfall is the somewhat goofy interface for it.  

Quote - this may cast doubt on provenance of other models.

As a reformed p***te (as I'm sure many of us are) I'm familiar with this site.  I recognized lots of stuff from some of my favourite games like Half-Life II and other items from 3D stores like Dosch and Evermotion.

 Avoid this place like the plague.

While learning Blender I discovered that there are a billion....no...really!, I counted them, video tutorials for Blender on youtube.  Now that the interface isn't ridiculous and just plain stupid anymore, it's user base has exploded and it seems that everyone is making tutorials.  I have yet to have a question (and I've had lots of them) that I couldn't answer this way.  A side benefit is that one usually finds answers to questions one didn't even know one had while researching the original question.  I keep the videos for reference and have them sorta arranged on a portable drive by category.