I'm wanting to do some mesh work on Poser figures, and the only modeling application I have now is MilkShape, which can't handle the high poly count of Poser figures. If I can avoid it I'd like to not spend the cash on the high end ones (3DS, Maya, Lightwave). Is there a low cost modeling app that can handle huge poly counts, has a lot of features, is easy to use, and is still low cost? (and runs under Win2k)

Amapi v4.2 is free there is a link from the amapi forum here at renderosity. newer versions of Amapi you can find on ebay for $50 (legal versions, not warez). Funky learning curve but hey it's free, and pretty powerful. I toyed with it for a while, but then jumped into Lightwave 7.5 when I had the cash so I don't even use Amapi anymore. There are also some tuts on creating clothes in amapi for poser. my 2 cents.

I'm waiting for MilkShape 2.0, myself. Caligari's trueSpace is relatively inexpensive.

Carrara 1.2 or Carrara 2 from Eovia is completely compatible with Poser and was once made by Metacreations who last owned Poser (in past incarnations it was called Ray Dream Studio). They also have a lite version called 3D Basics, which for under $100 is a steal--it has a lot of the bells and whistles of the more expensive version, just not as many modeler options. Check it out at www.eovia.com.

3d world magazine had truespace 3 full version on thier CD in nov or dec issue.

I use Rhino 2.0 right now - it's not exactly ment for pure polygon editing though. It uses nurbs. It's cheap compared to most modelers, (I'm a student and picked up my copy with Flamingo for around 250.00 if I remember correctly), and can do amazing things. It's an amazing tool at making morphs for poser characters too - however if your looking for a solid polygon modeler, then it's probally not going to be your first choice. I hear version 3.0 will offer more along the lines of polygon editing though. By the way, the Rhino 3d community here is amazing ;) . They'll teach you anything in no time!

I just got the free Amapi 4.2 ... I haven't done much with it but I will say that I was surprised when I registered that I was immediately contacted and offered help locating tutorials and offered help using the product. Customer service means a lot to me. I've no idea how it compares to other modeling programs. I understand Amapi 5 is available free on a CD in a computer magazine but I haven't found any yet, but I am very impressed with how responsive my contact was to my questions.

i'm a rhino user...it rocks. and, i totally double the comment on how nice the rhino forum is. support is very important, amapi has a wonderful forum, as well. that is another nurbs modeller.

TrueSpace 4 (maybe 3)used with a free Plug in called Luuv http://www.pinacoderm.com/tsx/luuv/ works great.

Blender is freeware! I highly recommend it. www.blender3d.com

Absolutely trueSpace! Low cost, very powerful, nice renderer, Sub Division surfaces, NURBS, full poly editing features, animation, metaballs, partnered with Curious Labs and can't be beat for the price. Download the demo version and Caligari will surely send you some sweet deals for buying the software.

daverj sed: "I'm wanting to do some mesh work on Poser figures" I wouldn't recommend Carrara as a modeling app. Evoia included Amapi with it, for a good reason. The cut down version of Carrara won't have any different modeling tools than the full version. Before you consider it, read as many reviews as you can find. That'll deter you. The free version of Amapi might be worth a try, but I don't think it has any .OBJ import or export. I didn't have any problem with getting it to crash every 10 minutes or so... Might have been the computer I was using it on at the time, but I wasn't the only one having that problem. Haven't used it for a while, and I thought using a 'cane' to navigate around it's disappearing icon based interface was a pain in the @$$. Rhino is really nice, but in the long run isn't cheap because it pretty much is only good for modeling. (yeah, I'm aware of the rendering add-on, but.. no dynamics, particles, bones, animation etc..etc..) Before you shell out the clams for that puppy, consider what all else you might want to eventually do beyond what Rhino is capable of. You can get Lightwave for not much more than Rhino costs. Truespace... Eh, I suppose that's a decent possibility, but it's interface is pretty funky and quirky. Caligari used to have some of the older versions on sale for pretty cheap. I'd check to see if there's free .OBJ import/export plugins for them first. Truespace has been known for it's fair share of stability problems, and alltho this might have changed, Caligari used to get a poor grade at customer relations, too. Just ask Bill Flemming. It's really a shame that NewTec doesn't sell Lightwave's modeler as a standalone. They could probably sell a lot, if they had the price at $500 or less. Some of the top CGI companies buy Lightwave just for the modeler. A lot of Maya users do their modeling with it, then export to Maya for the rest. NewTec DOES let people transfer lisences of Lightwave. If you could get your hands on Ver. 6 or 6.5 on e-bay or somwhere, the price would probably be pretty good, and you'd have a great modeling app, AND everything else that goes with it. Knowing what I know, if I were you, that's what I'd try to get first.

daverj sed: "I'm wanting to do some mesh work on Poser figures" daverj: I do alot of mesh manipulation on Poser figures myself, and I own a variety of 3D modelling programs; TrueSpace 4,Rhino 2,RayDream Studio 3D, RayDream Studio 5, Amapi 3D, Metasequioa, Blender, and Anim8or. Some of those programs are free, and I don't own any highend Apps like Lightwave, Mirai, Maya, or 3D Studio Max, but I gave up all my above formentioned Apps for just one up-n-comer which happens to be an opensource free program that is excellent with a great forum community to help you along the way: It's called "Wings3D". It's a Sub-D Polygon modeler with many exports including OBJ. It is very intuitive and easy to use. Many think it is as comparable to Mirai since it started out as a clone of Mirai's younger brother Nendo, but has far surpassed that program in many ways. You, and anyone else interested, should check it out: www.wings3d.com

Keep in mind that Poser can't use morph targets from any program that alters the polygon count from what I understand. Though a lot of people recommend NURB modelers, Poser can't utilize NURBS--so my question to the NURBS folk is how do you convert you NURBS models to a format Poser can understand, and wouldn't converting an obj file to NURBS alter polygon count? Just a question. Z-Brush is supposed to be very good for creating Poser morph targets, but is expensive and has a high learning curve. People love Amapi, but it is a tough program and ver. 5 runs real slow on my PC and I have 1.5 gig Pentium 4 with 526 megs of RR Ram.

Cinema 4D (SE 5, at least) has been given away free on magazine CD's...at least PC Format, and it's great for doing morphs so long as you don't mind fiddling a bit to do import and export using 3rd-party filters (the built-in filter doesn't change the number of vertices, but does seem to re-order them... which can cause some extremely odd results when brought back into Poser!). I must try wings...

wgreenlee1 is right. Before going to all the trouble to learn a program, make sure that it will be able to fulfill as many goals as you can see yourself setting. Every app requires time and study before you can really be comfortable with it, but I have found that Lightwave is a virtual "bottomless pit" of possibilities. You can literally dive into any aspect of 3D that your heart desires, from modeling to character rigging and animation to first class special effects. It's impossible to get bored with it, or outgrow it. And as Norbert stated, it can be purchased from ebay and the registration legally transferred. That's what I did. Being a newbie I didn't know how smart it was to spend gads on a 3D app when I didn't even know if I would like it. $575 for full version 6.5 and the best money I ever spent.

In an earlier post I recommended using TS4 with the luuv plugin for Poser
I recend and apologize my comments about recomending it. Based on the problems I've just been having unless I find a solution it would be hard to recommend it. For morph targets. It seems like the program does not work well with geometries smaller and more dense than the head. It worked fine for that. I assumed that an it would work for other parts as well but I been fighting it for hours trying get to work with P5 MT's. Maybe someone else can get it to work. I loaded up my old copy of Ray Dream and it worked like a champ on the same objects. Except I hate the user interface. In the meantime I'll see if there is a fix. But
I would hate for someone to buy it based on my first post
and run into what I have.

Okay I'm back to say I finally got TS4 to model poser figures properly using the LuuV. I thought the problem was in the small size of the poser inputted object. I'm not sure but the problem may have been in some screwy mode that my graphic adapter was in Direct X, or openGL. I was suspicious when I found that it worked okay in the lower part of the screen and not above midpoint All I know is that I played around with these settings and everything started working and hasn't quit yet. I am now back to using the modeler and I now can recomend it again.