I've never made any real tutorials so unfortunately I don't have anything like that to offer. The best advice I can give is to quote Tanis from the VOY episode "Cold Fire." He said, "Focus on the goal--not the task."
I'll give you an example. In
Specter, by far the most elaborate set I built was the
Voyager bridge. The wireframe on it would drive lesser beings mad because of how ridiculously cluttered it is (by necessity--Bryce's tools are primitive and practically everything on that set is a Boolean of one size or another). But, I approached that exactly the same way as I did the other sets: started off with the Paramount blueprints for the set (the layout from above anyway), and then just started building, one item at a time. The way I kept myself going was by focusing on one single item and just going at it until it was finished.
My advice to anyone else who wants to duplicate what I've done is to not let the overwhelming nature of the task daunt you. A lot of people seem to chase instant gratification, but if you want the quality I've achieved, it's not going to happen quickly. I put a lot of TLC into all of my sets, and I daresay it shows--I researched the evolution of each set as its respective series progressed (mostly through screencaps from TrekCore.com), and chose the color scheme and lighting setup I liked the best. Then I searched for LCARs--Adge's Site was and continues to be an incredible asset there--and once one set was finished, I'd simply move on to the next.
As for Poser, the bulk of my time goes into working in Poser on the characters. Advocates for motion capture will tell you that it's a much easier way to go--easier maybe, but it doesn't give you the kind of control over the motions of your characters that I prefer to have.
My approach when animating in Poser is to start off with the lip synch--which is done with DAZ's Mimic Pro--and then synchronize the motions of the characters with whatever dialogue is being said. Most of the shots will be a character against a black screen, with the background plate matted in later, but some shots will involve a character moving, and the camera moving to follow. For those shots, what I'll do is render a super-sized background plate, add a touch of blur to it, then import it onto a large wall plate (what you might call a "billboard") that will be fully visible at all times during the animation.
This has the net effect of a character walking around in front of a matte painting. As they move and the camera moves, the "scenery" behind them appears to move accordingly. This approach does have its drawbacks, it's quick and efficient and, in the right hands, can make for some good scenes. An animator who knows what they're doing can completely disguise the fact that this is taking place.
As for the character motions themselves, all I can say is that for best results, perform the dialogue yourself before you animate it, and it'll give you a better feel for how your characters will move and look. Then the animating process becomes easy--trying to animate motions and expressions you don't understand results in the CG equivalent of "wooden" performances.
That's just some quick and dirty thoughts
I'll see what else I can offer as I make the next clip.
