Hi, I have been enjoying the improved Poser rendering using Firefly, it's definitely a notch above the older Poser 4 renderer. However, I'm really feeling the desire to graduate to a better renderer. I know that people will tend to recommend what they are comfortable using, which is good, I would like to hear of experiences exporting and rendering Poser scenes/figures in a wide range of applications. However, I am also looking for specific advice as well: I don't necassarily need a full featured 3D animation application. What product would people recommend that allows for relatively smooth importation of poser figures, clothing, etc..., a notable improvement in render options and quality over Firefly, while generally offering the most "bang for the buck"? The money issue is more for the short term. I'm going back to school in the Fall and will definitely be looking at the various educational pricing packages. :) TIA

I'll recommend Vue. It has a nice renderer AND it imports Poser's PZ3's perfect. I've also seen nice renders from Carrara

Attached Link: http://www.mythospheres.com/grey.html

Vue is really great, but i would recommend Cinema 4D.

What exactly are you looking for? Different applications have different strengths, e.g. Vue is great for outdoors (they say) where e.g. C4D has nice things like subsurface scattering and comparably fast volumetrics.

Bryce 4/5 can import & render obj files exported from poser, they don't do too well with the dynamic cloth & hair tho. Course if you have a few (ok a few thousand) pennies going spare you can try 3dsMax, Lightwave, Maya or SoftImage XSI.

The only thing that keeps Firefly in P5 from being competitive with any of the afforementioned renderers (aside from Bryce) is Poser's crappy (and difficult to manage) lighting system. It's also very slow at raytracing, but so is Bryce. Anyway, it all depends on your budget. Vue has the best toolset for a relatively low cost, and is the most compatible with Poser scenes. 3dsMax 6 has a few different plugins that makes it compatible with Poser scenes and comes bundled with one of the industry's best raytrace engines (Mental Ray), but costs a small fortune (the same with Maya). Lightwave has a great built-in renderer with Radiosity and is the cheapest of the high end packages. Bryce has an old, slow renderer but can produce some stunning results if you have the time to wait for renders. I've heard people using Bryce actually waiting days for a render. Carrara has a great raytrace engine, is fairly easy to use, and has plugins that make it compatible with Poser. If you ever used the old Ray Dream or Dream 3D software years ago, you will be familiar with Carrara. However, Carrara has it's limitations compared to C4D or any of the higher end softwares, but can produce some great results as well. Most of the high end apps are compatible with PRMan, which is still one of the most widely used renderers in Hollywood movie FX. The materials in P5 is PRMan compliant as well. So it all depends on your budget, and how deep you want to get involved in 3D. ;-)

Most of the high end apps are compatible with PRMan, which is still one of the most widely used renderers in Hollywood movie FX. Poser is directly compatible to Pixar's PRMan, see "File/Export/RIB...". Although, if you ever thought the Material Room was complex, stay away from PRMan!

I render in carrara3. Dollar for dollar, it was the best deal for me. Just get ready for longer render times with better results. Feel free to browse my gallery for my results. Regards, E

Render times are dependent not just on the engine but also on things like how many lights and reflective surfaces you have. It is much easier to make a really complex lighting set with a proper 3D app than it is with Poser - some people use hundreds of lights. In addition to a better render engine, with a proper 3D app you get a much better working environment for laying out scenes.

I'd reccomend Vue if you want to do a lot of outdoor scenes. I've also used Poser with an older version of Truespace (TS 4.3) with the Truepose and LUUV plugins. That worked quite well. I find I am rendering in Poser 5 itself more and more. It doesn't have practical volumetrics, or any advanced rendering stuff like Radiosity, but for straight up raytracing it works great. (Provided you have a robust machine.)And P5 does have some fairly advanced features that are lacking in some other lower end 3d apps, like Poly smoothing and displacement mapping. If I had the bucks and the inclination to learn a new interface from scratch I'd probably choose lightwave.

Vue would be the way to go!

No, its not the way to go at all. The Firefly renderer is way better than Vue's.

I would highly recommend Vue. Importation with Vue's Mover 5 is very easily done, and you can do a preview render with shadows in a fraction of the time it takes Poser.

"It is much easier to make a really complex lighting set with a proper 3D app than it is with Poser - some people use hundreds of lights." Yep. Or you can go with an application that supports true GI (3dsMax, Maya, Lightwave, C4D, and I think Carrara too), and only have to add an additional one or two lights to the scene to achieve great results for still images. GI could be a little too slow for most animation requirements though. By the way, does anyone here know if Vue supports GI yet? Or high dynamic range lighting? Just curious.

Attached Link: http://www.povray.org/

Is Pose Ray compatible with P5? Never tried it, but all I ever see is support for P4 and I don't use P4 anymore. Silke

I don't think Pose Ray can use the dynamics, clothes, hair, or the material nodes. Pov-Ray has it's own material to replace P5 nodes, or the ones you want to import. P5's PZ3 is the same as P4's PZ3. So most everything else will work.

That should read, dynamic clothes and hair.