I haven't had the opportunity to play around much with other 3D applications, but I'm curious about the differences between posing a character in something like Max or Lightwave versus Poser. Since was specifically designed to pose figures, I'd imagine that it's easier posing in Poser and that it would probably have the overall advantage in realistic posing. If anybody has a lot of experience in other 3D applications, I'm interested in reading where the differences are and what advantages one program brings over another.

Poser is quicker and easier to use than other 3D Apps (it's one main advantage), but as far as realistic posing goes, it's not as powerful as some like Maya and Character Studio/Biped for 3dsMax. Starting with the boning and skinning of the character, the features in Character Studio are infinitely more versitile and powerful. The bending is cleaner and more realistic in these high end apps than in Poser (even though you can fuss with Poser's clumsy joint editor, it doesn't help the poor skinning).

Poser has it's advantages in the fact that there are so many pre-made morphs and poses available for it's figures, but for most users of high end software, using ready-made anything is out of the question anyway.

As for animating, there's no comparison. I could illustrate to you for hours on why Poser does not hold up to the standards of those software apps you mentioned, but I'll spare you the drama. Basically, I'll just point out that 3dsMax has a true dynamics simulator built into it called Reactor that can calculate and animate true physical reactions for a biped's interaction with it's environment... such as a character being hit by a car or falling from a high building or being pushed to the ground. Plus there's things like fluid and hardbody/softbody simulation, as well as cloth, rope, hair and more available in Max that just can't be duplicated in Poser (although the CLOTH simulation in P5 is just as good as any I've seen.).

Not to mention render speeds for animation in these high end apps are 3x faster when using raytrace materials, and the lights available in these high end programs are far superior to the ones Poser uses at the moment.

I wouldn't have time to show all the differences between Poser and those high end apps (it's a long list), but to answer your question, Poser is easier to use, and for certain things like still images, it's a quicker solution. But as far as advantages in REALISM or posing? There are very few. Like I said, Poser's realistic advantage is ease-of-use.

If I might take the original question one step further. What are the chances for a successful animation in taking CL or Daz millenium figures into a program like MotionBuilder (or a major 3d app) and installing a new bone rig and skinning? Having spent nearly half a day in C4d doing an eyesocket in hypernurbs with point to mesh, the idea of modeling an entire realistic figure is proving a little daunting. (This isn't a defamation of the program, but an indication of my own inexperience:) One other apparent advantage that Poser has is the possiblity of a varied wardrobe, hair, and accessories ( proprietary or 3rd party) which can be readily changed and adapted. manowar

There's a utility already for lightwave that allows you to import and render poser characters. I think I just read of a MAX one as well. But keep in mind, you're going to be render 30 fps at least, for smooth animation. If one frame takes 10 minutes to render, then you can only render 6 frames a hour. It'll take you 5 hours to render 1 second of animation. Now let's say you want to render only a minute. That's 300 HOURS of render time, or roughly a week solid of rendering. For one minute of footage. Granted, you can turn off all bells and whistl;es, and render low res poor quality, but then what's the point?

Yes, you're quite right. Unfortunately, both CL and Daz, have relegated animation to the backburner, not only through the high poly count of their figures, but also the poor tools. manowar

I've seen MUCH higher poly count on lightwave figures then what we see in poser. I think the problem is that you are looking for pro level animation utilities on a software platform not targetted to the pro level market. Would you be willing to pay $400-$1000 (or more) for poser animation utilities, like the ones available for other software platforms? Heck the new worley plugin for lightwave that just gives you a real time updated display sells for about $700 or so. Poser is GREAT for what it is intended for.. low cost entry level 3d rendering of characters. In many cases it exceeds it's original intent.

maxxxmodelz wrote: "for most users of high end software, using ready-made anything is out of the question anyway" Depends rather what your skills are and what you want to do. If I had the inclination to buy 3dsMax I still wouldn't have the time to make a human figure from scratch, and if I did, I wouldn't do it as well as Daz. I should imagine many of us feel the same way.

When I look at the credits for Pixar, and other animated films, there are more credits for animators than model builders. That makes sense because there's hours of animation, but only a dozen or so models. If somebody really wants to break into that industry, they're probably better off focusing on animating characters than building them. Based on the credits I've seen, the work is very subdivided. I would guess that there is no standard method of boning and skinning models across all the major 3D apps such that a model built in one would be immediately useable in the other. I was curious whether what I learn to do in Poser has much cross application with the other programs. I'm mostly interested in doing 2D images, so Poser is probably what I should stick with.