What is a good program to make props from scatch? Such as pencls, silverwear, lighters, cigaretts? Lifeform

You need some sort of modeling program and the preferred mesh format is wavefront .obj files, so the modeler should export the meshes/models in that format, or you'll need some way to convert them.

There are several 'free' modelers available... you might want to take a look at these:

Wings3d - http://www.wings3d.com
Anim8or - http://www.anim8or.com

...both of them will export in .obj format. I personally use Wings3D currently for most of my work.

If you want to be able to texture-map your model, you'll need to create UV mapping attributes... one of the most widely used utilities for doing this is Steve Cox's UVMapper program - http://www.uvmapper.com

Once you have your model created and/or set up for texturing, you can import it as a prop into Poser ( File/Import/Wavefront OBJ... ). Note that Poser's world space is very tiny... your newly created cigarette prop may be as large as one of your characters. You can either scale the model as you import it, or (as I normally do), load it full size, then scale it using the prop dials.

Once you have it scaled and positioned to suit you (ie. good 'default' positioning), export your model back out, delete the one you have from the scene and load the scaled/positioned one back in... set up your materials (optionally parent it to a character if you want a smart-prop) and save it to your prop library.

The reason for re-loading it after scaling is so the prop's new 'default' size is 100%. If you just used the one you scaled down, it might be scaled way down (4%, 10%, etc)... scaling happens in finite steps and those steps are huge if you're starting out with a prop that's already only 5-10% it's original size. If you load it back in after scaling, you get the full range of scaling available again, so you can make fine scaling adjustments.

Good luck,

• Keith