so whats ereryone prefs on the 3d programs best for poser or are they really all the same? epsilon "let there be light"

If you excluded Maya and 3D Studio because of price, you should add Softimage, Cinema4D, and Lightwave to the list. They cost almost as much as Max.

There is no real one program answer, its mostly down to budget and preference. I strongly advise that you try before you buy although not all software companies allow this. My choice, with which I am very happy, is Truespace. They currently offer a free trial. With it I have been able to develop all my models which may be viewed at my site. Hope this helps, Regards

And I'm partial to Vue d'Esprit because I was able to get it to work first time I tried it. I'm STILL trying to figure out the interfaces in Bryce and TrueSpace but so far the only one I've even been able to make a complete image in has been Vue. I'm just not software compatible or something :) Kate

There are good programs at every price range. Question is...just what is your budget?

its very rare to find a bad 3d app these days....if your just wanting to do stills almost any will do but if its animation your after then LW (using bones or the poser pro pack on release), truespace (with konans plugin) or cinema seem to be the only choice......Steve

oh yeah, we all know how much i'm into this discussion ;) i hate it, i whish i'd already found the one and only cheap renderer with real skin, muscles, bones and native poser import for no more than a few bucks we'll i can't tell much in here some people render good stills with bryce, and with vue i did some amazing things myself, but the render engine is horrible slow, but it's very easy to use if you are looking to develop 3d models for animation i suggest that you trash poser and get an eye on Hash Animation Master, i did not yet work with it, but from what i have seen i can say it's an insane animation tool for characters, and there've been done some pretty neat models! take a look at hash.com for more info, btw it's only $299,- and thats a great price for what it can do i've not figured out yet on how easy it is to transfer poser work to AM. btw there is another human character generation tool out there, called something like "reflex" or whatever i've seen they'r site some time, it's about modelling really close to nature, with muscles etc and realistic animation of them, but the figures don't look very beautiful yet, more than Trevor from aeon flux :) but i'll keep an eye on it -Ede