I have Poser 5 and 3D Studio Max. I want to know if it is worth getting Body Studio 2 from Reiss to use 3D Max to render my animations. I have to render 5 minutes of video, and at my current settings that I need to render at it is taking 26 hours for 8 seconds of video. (Firefly engine with almost all settings on.) If I render the same thing in Max, will it render faster, or should I just stick to Poser. Is there any place (website) where I can get a technical comparison of render speeds, etc. I have searched and found nothing. I also know someone with Maya, might it be a better option to get Body Studio for Maya. What are the render speeds like for Maya?
Any help will be appreciated.

I have used the old PP plugins to render in 3DSMax. The times were soooo much faster, however the old plugins didn't works so well with the added capabilities of P5. I would like to hear some feedback as to how much is imported, such as material settings, hair, cloth, and how smooth is it???

Apparently the Body Studio plug-in can transfer an entire animation; figures, props, textures and the movements, as well as the cameras. Basically sounds like you can transfer the entire poser file, although the documentation says nothing about lights. Go to http://www.reiss-studio.com and see how little information they actually provide. I don't know if things like volumetric lighting, for instance, is also transferred. I would buy the program if I knew it could do what I wanted and would make my renders faster, but seeing as the program costs more than Poser itself I would have to be very sure.

Well, I'll tell you this: buy the prog.... it's worth every penny (althought expensive) but it's worth if you have to deal with poser and max, and yes even the new hair and clothes can be "exported" what it does is import the whole pz3 file with all the goodies on it.... at least on my side , well, so far, so good. no complains whatsoever. vince

Yes, I agree with vince, I have Body Studio and love it. Rendering is so much faster. But if you are using P5 hair or volumetric lighting it will slow things down a bit. I have a PIII 1.8mhz with 1gig ram and a normal render (with one high res textured figure) takes less than a minute to render. Loading the pz3 file takes awhile sometimes if you have a complex scene. (usually between 1 and 5 minutes)

Can you post a rendering of what P5 hair looks like in 3ds? I'd love to see that.

Attached Link: http://www.altawoman.net/images/image01.jpg

Thanks. Does the hair not cast any shadows at all or did you turn off shadows?

I think on that image I turned the shadows off. Probably the best is to set shadows to about .6 or .7 because if you set them to full, the hair and face become too dark. On this image I think I might have had a little self-illumination turned on too. I was trying to get the golden glowing hair look.

one thought, if you have access to more than one computer, is you can use Max's ability to set up a render farm for animations. Even one other machine can cut render times significently.

Thanks for all the help. I will be getting the program. I do think that either Reiss or Curious Labs should do a comparitive test on render speeds on a few different machines and models, using Poser, and then Bodystudio on Max and Maya, and then post the results somewhere. Quite a few more people would buy the program if they knew that the render speeds would be cut a lot on animations, etc. Where do I go to post a suggestion like this to them? Thanks again for the help.

hey num, curious labs does not want to that, they will not show how their prog is so f******** slow, and since reiss has to work with them he can not do that too.... hehehhehehehehe.... it's all about the business baby!!!!!! vince

Mmmmmm, I am getting BodyStudio for Max, and I have Max, and I have downloaded the student evaluation copy of Maya, all I need is a copy of BodyStudio for Maya and I can do my own comparison. I did find a website where some American forensic scientist did a comparitive study of Poser and Maya, and Poser won, basically on price and speed of work and availability of a large library of premade models. And I found another website that compared the render speeds of Cinema4D to Max and Lightwave and Cinema4D won on render speed. Does anybody have any idea of the render speeds for World Builder. That will be my next purchase after BodyStudio.

Given the price sifference, and that I am not interested in doing animations, would it be better for me to get BodyStudio or the Pro Pack?

if u r not into animation and using poser5 than you can live without it, there's another prog that do something similiar but not as good.... I forgot the name sorry. if you have poser4, than go for the pro pack, no animation and even some animation can go on, althought I'm not sure if max5 accepts that or if there's a patch for it.... hope that helps

I am using Poser 4 and MAX 4 (tho I hope to upgrade when 6 comes out). That does help. Thanks.