Here's my round-up of useful things to have - most are free, but where I think it's worthwhile spending money, I've said so.

First of all, how about a capable 3D character posing and rendering application for free? That's what you get if you download DAZ|Studio. It isn't Poser, but it can read Poser library content, and it will most definitely get you started. Additional features can be bought in the form of plug-ins, and you may find you never need to buy Poser.

If that wasn't enough, you could also consider a free landscape generator and renderer. It isn't the latest version, but you can still get a lot done.

The Windows version is here, and the Macintosh version is here.

All of DAZ's base figures are now free, the only catch being that they want you to buy their add-ons. But you can get a lot done with the basic people nonetheless.

At the time I'm writing this, you can find Aiko 3.0, Aiko 4, Aiko Anime, David, Hiro 3.0, Hiro 4, Michael 2.0, Michael 2.0 Reduced Resolution, Michael 3 Reduced Resolution, Michael 3.0, Michael 4, The Millennium Baby, The Millennium Baby 3.0, The Millennium Boys, The Millennium Girls, The Millennium Kids Preschoolers, The Millennium Kids Young Teens, Stephanie, Stephanie 3.0 Petite, Stephanie Reduced Resolution, The Freak, The Freak 4, The Girl, The Girl 4, Victoria 2.0, Victoria 2.0 Reduced Resolution, Victoria 3 Reduced Resolution, Victoria 3.0, and Victoria 4.2 (pause to draw breath) here:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/3d-models/generation-4-bundles?cat=1025 (opens in new window)

Also still available are:

• Sara - cartoon-style female who has a strong following.
• Emotiguy - a unique figure, intended for making emoticons ("smilies").

• Apollo Maximus - the best Poser figure is now free thanks to the incredible generosity of his creator, Anton Kisiel. You can download the whole set: figure, textures, clothing, hair, and even the face room module.
• Kirwyn's "K" figure is available from his Renderosity home page file locker (free registration required). She's a well made female figure who doesn't get enough support - there's a clothed "gunslinger" version too.
• Maya Doll - part realistic, part anime inspired figure from Studio Maya. Well supported with clothing, hair and characters.
• The Project Human figures by Sixus1 Media are available from ShareCG.
• F202 Dollie is a cartoon style female figure.
• Deco, Maybe and Decoco are a toon style woman, man and young girl respectively, which you can get from Akatora's site.

You'll almost certainly need a painting program / picture editor. This is for preparing texture maps (an editor with layers is more useful, e.g. PSP version 5 onwards) and tweaking your images after you've rendered them (known as "post" work).

I use Paint Shop Pro version 7. PSP is now owned by Corel, and the word on the street is that later versions are not an improvement; however I have no personal experience to offer.

Alternatives include PhotoShop (the industry standard), and at the other end of the price scale (but not ability), The GIMP, which has the advantage of being free.

Poser files are usually text files which are highly inflated, and are always compressed for download. Windows XP can handle ZIP format natively, but you may need a stand-alone application for other popular formats such as RAR. I use PeaZip, specifically the portable version - see my comments on NotePad++ for why.

If you want to get into making your own props, maybe morph targets or even clothes, then you need a stand-alone modeller. Your best bet is to try them and see which you get on best with. These are the free ones that should be on your list:

• Anim8or - this is the one I use, and is Windows only.
• Wings 3D - more capable than Anim8or, and available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Blender - very capable, but with an interface which some find off-putting. Available for all the major operating systems.

In addition to a modeller, you'll most likely want a 3D mesh convertor, especially if you spend your time trawling the web for freebie downloads. :) Each of these will do some formats better than others, so it's probably advisable to have access to them all.

• PoseRay - enables Poser scenes to be rendered in the free POV-Ray renderer, as well as converting various formats into OBJ.
• Biturn
• LithUnwrap - although this is intended for UV mapping, it's also a capable 3D format convertor.
• Keith Rule's Crossroads is old (more than 10 years!) but is still useful.

You'll need a text editor capable of handling enormous files. Sooner or later, there will be something that can only be done by hacking one of the gigantic text files that Poser uses. Notepad won't do! I now use NotePad++. Well, to be really precise, I use the portable version from PortableApps.com. I can put it on a Flash memory USB stick and edit stuff on any Windows computer I happen to be sitting in front of. I can recommend the rest of the PortableApps suite too - but that's getting off-topic for this page...

I now do most of my Poser file editing with a dedicated editor. They are safer to use, because they look after the matching of braces {} for you, and they're easier to use, because you can see the file in a hierarchical layout and it's easier to navigate to the various sections.

I mainly use Dimension3D's Poser File Editor. Free alternatives are:

• John Stallings' CR2 Editor can edit any of the Poser library files. You can download a copy here: Cr2Editor151.zip (224KB)
• CR2 Builder

UVmapper by Steve Cox, from http://www.uvmapper.com. Use it for generating texture templates, decoding UVS remap files, and lots more besides if you start modelling. The Pro version is worth paying out for if you do this seriously; features such as 3D textured previews, displacement mapping and smoothing are very useful for modellers.

RoadKill is a different type of UV mapper, which offers better "flattening" of your mesh - this may help to explain where it got its name from... It's Windows only, and is available free from Pullin Shapes. The download for RoadKill is a little confusing: you want the Maya version, which despite what you may think is stand-alone, not a plugin. You won't need Maya to be able to use it, fortunately. It's labelled Roadkill 1.1 (release candidate 3) - and be aware that you will get a file named RoadKill_1_1_RC3.zip, not 5vyhgt7d9t.zip as it says on the page. I've put together a tutorial which uses it.

Morph Manager by Paul "Mr. X" Mason. Download a copy here (326KB). This can transfer morph targets from one model to another, extract, delete and rename them.

Objaction Mover by Maz; get it from Sandy Lodge. You'll need this to decode modified meshes which are distributed in the .pcf format to avoid copyright trouble.

Most recent downloads use RTEncoder by Russell Cook. You can get it from RTEncoder.com. At last there are versions for Windows and Macs (Intel and PPC).

P3dO Explorer by Yarp; get it from SENO Software. This is very useful for organising your Poser files. Once again, the Pro version is worth the outlay for regular users, and offers many more features.

STOMP by Keith "Spanki" Young. Download it from here. This is useful as a viewer for OBJ files, which gives you information about their size etc.; it can also perform various other useful functions including mirroring, scaling, editing materials and more.

Of particular interest to Poser 5 and 6 users is its ability to "de-fragment" an OBJ file to streamline the Adding Objects phase of a FireFly render. See this thread at Renderosity for more details.

Note: the e-mail contact address given in the program, and in the readme, is no longer operational. If you need to contact Spanki, the best way is via his member page at Renderosity (just click on his name in the thread linked above).

Compose by John Wind - download it directly from http://home.tir.com/~johnwind/Compose11.zip. This handy utility can scale, rotate and move .obj meshes; translate to and from trueSpace format; break up and reform multi-group .obj files for use in programs that don't handle them; extract morph targets; convert Poser files into .obj meshes; and more. When you need it, you need it. This is written in Java, so it will work equally well on Mac or PC. However the readme file is unsurprisingly out of date. The best way to install the Java runtime is to visit www.java.com.