I'm a little surprised at some of the posts about Victoria 4. People are upset that they cannot use their favorite V3 textures on V4. They're annoyed that they cannot use their best V3 clothing on V4. What are they going to do with their significant investments in V3? This may seem overly simplified, but why not keep using V3?

I'm a Platinum Club member, so getting a free V4 simplified my question of when I'd pick up the figure. Eventually, I'll buy the morphs and a better texture. When clothing is at the right price, I'll get some V4 clothing. Till then, I won't be using the figure much. My workflow, for a while, has been to use the figure that has the right look and clothing for the image I'm creating. V4 has some nice new features and works well in Poser 6, so there's no question that I'll someday be using that figure more and more. V4 isn't a huge quantum leap over V3. The differences between the first Victoria and the P4 female were more dramatic. V4 is a much bigger jump over V3 than V3 was over V2. None of the improvements invalidate the earlier models. In a lot of images, the advances from one model to the other make no difference. The distance of the figure and the pose being used may be perfectly adequate for a V2 figure and doesn't require the improvements in the later figures.

For me, V4 is one more Poser figure. I have little doubt that V4 will soon have thousands of support products available before the end of 2007. I'm sure that there will be unique things available for the figure that will have me using it.

When I see all the emotional angst and frustration over V4's release, I'm kind of reminded of an old Steve Martin sketch where an escalator broke down and people were trapped on it for days because they couldn't figure out how they used to get to the second floor before there were escalators. There was a way to create Poser art without V4 and there still is. If somebody has a favorite V3 texture or clothing item, feel free to use it on V3. I promise to not snicker at anybody using an older model. After all, I've got V2 and M2 figures in my gallery and even one with the P4 male. Each was adequate for the illustration I was creating.

Try to remember that it's not the tools you use that create art--it's what you do with those tools.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon