I have Bryce 3D and have tried to use it to render Poser 4 scenes, but it seems a very complicated and time consuming process. Is Bryce 4 easier and is it worth buying just for this feature?

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You bet it is! EMPHATICALLY so. Bryce 4 is far better than Bryce 3D, and you can say goodbye to all those texturing problems for ever! Check out the link I've included to Vue d'Esprit, another program which handles Poser very well. There is a demo there at this site too, and it allows you to save rendered pictures---for 30 days, that is. It IS however, sadly, Windows ONLY. :( --Mike

Just my 2 cents: I've been using Bryce and VUE more and more lately to render Poser scenes. I'm really amazed at VUE's capabilities. I think the learning curve on Bryce might be slightly higher (for me anyway). But I'm beginning to klunk this program too. One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to transfer textures and materials into VUE, which Bryce seems to handle better. But definitely consider Bryce 4 and/or VUE. They really expand your horizons.

I'm not so sure I understand what you mean by "transfer", unless you're talking about applying the materials. Bryce 4, for example, will allow you to search for any textures which are not in the folder with a .obj export from Poser, as determined by the .mtl file, before it's been loaded. Vue does not allow for browsing to find the textures, but if they are all in the same folder, it's no problem, provided you have saved it out of Poser as .obj. We have a Vue d'Esprit forum here, and of course you are very much welcome to come on over there and ask anything/everything you would like about it. BUT this IS the Poser forum, and I guess since exporting and texturing Poser objects/characters is a major concern for alot of people, I guess this IS on topic here. Vue and Bryce both have lots of terrific features, and I wouldn't want to do without either of them. They're simply different, and give very different results. Vue 4 will be coming out soon, and some of the problems with Vue 3 will have been taken care of by then. But back to the texturing, if you ARE asking about the loading of textures on to a Poser character, it can also be done manually within Vue, saved as a material file and re-used. There are several very, very good tutorials about this and other things in Renderosity's Tutorials section, and I would suggest you have a look at them. There is lots of great free stuff to be had at the sites where the tutorials are linked from too. :) --Mike

Mike, You're right about my term transfer. Thanks for the help on "applying" the materials. I will check out the VUE forum. My point was simply that Bryce and VUE do offer a lot of entended capabilities in creating scenes with Poser generated characters and objects. I'm learning all these programs at the same time, so forgive my newbie-ness. :-) Doc

Cool. One thing I forgot to mention is that there are certain workarounds for it, at least in Vue. Since the .mtl file is actually a simple text file, you can use a text editior to manually alter the paths, and if Vue knows specifically where to search, it will find them. That can be fairly tedious though. What I do, is I have a folder in which I place ALL my textures that I use for everything Poser-related, and then my .obj exports are exported to there, so there is never any chance for Vue to fail to find a texture. Of course, you download Poser characters, or whatever, and initially the textures D have to be somewhere specific as determined by any Read Me's, but if you move the texture to a new location, reload it on to the Poser character, and then re-save it, Poser will always search the new path for that texture. I have next to nothing in my Poser directory, as far as textures go, actually. It took a good while for me to set it up that way, but now whenever I get something new, it's only a matter of a few minutes' additional work, and like I said, there will be no chance that Vue or Bryce will fail to find it. Newbie-ness excused. :) Render on! --Mike

Many thanks for all this advice it is really helpful. I will download the 30 day Vue demo and give it a try.

fairlawns, You won't be sorry, I assure you. I was really amazed with VUE. Mike, Thanks for this input. This is REALLY helpful stuff. Being new at this I've been hesitant to experiment with the organization of the Poser directory for fear I would put something in the wrong place. But I see now how much more simple it would be (albeit time-consuming to set up) to have everything in one place. Thanks, bro! Doc

I'm glad to be of help. :) Now since you said you're a newbie, just remeber, as far as I know it is ONLY the textures which can be located outside of the Poser directory. Perhaps geometries too, but I don't really know. I wouldn't mess with that anyway. And if you ever lose that folder, make sure you at least have a backup of the textures, and you know the exact name of the folder, or else you'll have a problem. Although when Poser can't find something, it at least tells you where it's looking. --Mike

Just one other thing I want to mention about doing it this way. If you have a program which will give you thumbnail views of an entire folders' worth of jpeg's and bitmaps, you can use it to see all of your available textures at once. I have alot, and often can't remember the names of them, because I have this really bad habit of naming them things like 001, 002, 003..... ;) But anyway, that also really helps to save time. :) --Mike