I aim for animations I can play on my DVD player, so my process is as follows:

1. Create Poser PZ3 file with my figures and attached props.

2. Import the Poser PZ3 into Cinema 4D XL v7.3. For the scenery, I have separate C4D templates with any flooring, walls, light domes, skies, etc I want for the scene. Keeping the figures separate from the scenery allows me to move the animated figures within the scene (because Cinema 4D imports all the elements of the Poser PZ3 as an indivisible unit).

3. Render in Cinema 4D in PSD format. MUCH faster rendering than Poser, and better lighting effects to boot. I can usually get a 480 frame animation with several millenium figures and complex scenery in an overnight (6-8 hour) rendering run.

4. With individual frames in PSD format, I can do any editing I want (e.g., neon glow filter, increase sharpness, etc) using the batch editing capability of Photoshop.

5. Import the PSD image sequence into Quicktime Pro 6.

6. Add any audio streams as WAV files.

7. From here I have two options:

option a = save movie as a Quicktime MOV file, which can be directly imported to Ulead Movie Factory 2 for DVD creation

option b = export Quicktime movie as an AVI (no compression, million+ colors, etc); then convert AVI to MPEG2 using the best MPEG-2 converter I have found so far: TMPGENC. Then import the converted MPEG-2 file into 321 Studio's DVD X Maker.

Option b is more work, but DVD X Maker has some advantages over Ulead MF2, including ability to impose parental controls (for when you don't want your kids to see Vicky running around naked with her sword in a temple).

The one thing I have noticed is that some of the DVDs I create have a hard time playing on my laptop. They play just fine on my home DVD player, but can get laggy on the laptop. This seems odd since the laptop always plays commercial DVDs just fine and the laptop is actually an extremely powerful mobile workstation. So I'm guessing there must somehow be significantly more data associated with each frame of my Poser animations than a commercial DVD, though I would have thought the compression would have normalized that.

Anyway, that is the best strategy I've found so far, though my strategy is much much more a product of experimentation than any actual technical knowledge.

good luck... TG