i just sent the following message to curious labs tech support. while i'm awaiting their reply, perhaps some of you folks could offer some insights ... ?

from the Poser Pro Pack User Guide:

"To load a Poser file into Lightwave for the first time:

"1. Select File>Load Scene (Lightwave 5.x and 6.0) or File>Load>Load Scene (Lightwave 6.5). In the Load Scene dialog box, select All Files in the Files of Type pull-down menu, and locate and open your desired Poser (*.pz3 or *.pzz) file.

"2. A progress indicator (6.x) or hourglass icon (5.x) displays as the file loads.

"3. Your figure(s) and/or prop(s) from the Poser file appear in the Lightwave window:"

sounds simple enough: i successfully installed the lightwave plugins onto my system & added the plugins via lightwave's options tab as per your manual, but now have reached an impass in trying to open an actual poser file. you see, unlike the instructions quoted above, the dialog box offers no "files of type" pulldown menu. i repeated the steps with inspire 3d, which i also have, but didn't get any further. it seems that without this option, lightwave/inspire has no way of identifying poser files (showing only lightwave files), leaving me no way of actually opening them! this is particularly frustrating because the main reason i purchased the program was to open poser scenes in lightwave! so i'm feeling very disappointed -- it's hard to believe your beta-testers could have missed something like this.

i'm using lightwave 5.6 and inspire 1.0 for the powermac on a powerbook g3/400mhz with 512mb ram running system os 9. any assistance whatsoever would be greatly appreciated.

go to the file name dialog box and type in . and hit the enter button all file names should show up

I looked at buying Inspire but went instead with LW 6.5 (because I could get it as an "upgrade" from Adobe After Effects for $995). I paid the extra bucks also because 6.5 correctly supports Poser's UV mapping, whereas lower versions will either produce seams (LW 6) or no texture maps at all (LW 5.6 and Inspire). Have no idea what the "work-around" is...

alvon123, if by "file name dialog box" you mean a text entry field for the actual file name, no dice. there is none. i'm just presented with a list of files to choose from. i'm only allowed to navigate among my disk drives and choose what lightwave sees.

the only way I know of to keep the UV mapping in LW 5.6 is this way- http://www.3dgladiators.com/warrior/Tutorial/Poser2LW/pos2lw.htm Dunno if that'll help in this case though....

go to objects tab in inspire3d , select load from scene, and see if you have a file name and files of type dialog box...if you dont have these then there may be bigger issues going on since this is happening in both inspire3d and lightwave. (must let you know that i am running these apps in Win 2000, which is a step from MAC OS). if you still dont see those dialog boxes in Inspire3d then you may want to update(overwrite) your LWPANELS.P with a newer one, from newteks ftp site. this controls your inspire3d gui

i've actually been bringing poser objs into lightwave for about a year now but when i heard that the pro pack's lightwave plugin was designed to streamline the process i chomped at the bit. i did some rooting around newtek's ftp site and found a plugin called filenavigator.p. it's supposed to support mac system os 8.5 and later. unfortunately that's all the information available on it. there's nothing about its actual purpose or method of installation. i've email newtek's tech support about it, but in the meantime, anybody know anything about this plugin? is it what i'm looking for?