OK.... I've FINALLY saved $500 someodd to get modelling software....I'm not to bright... can work with Poser 4 magnets, haven't figured out Waves yet, tired of sucking off from other's talent, can't search the archives for recommendations, need a smaller learning curve, produce object files for Poser directly, able to develop UV maps, Joint parameters are probably going to be beyond me...but willing to try, doesn't need a ton of bells and whistles, was able to create a primative figure with Poser primatives, would love to produce small/short animation sequences, everyone uses something differant...I guess based on experience (I have none), don't mind buying a simple package and then stepping up as experience improves, suck at math, want to be able to put clothes on animals.... (don't worry, cartoon animals... sheesh), industrial / mechanical gadgets / machines /processes / models for website clients, massive amounts of detail not required, haven't used Bryce in ages... but like the renders, can't use Autocad but have used Design Cad 2D and 3D extensively, can visualize in xyz coordinates easily, am a VP of Engineering but my staff thinks I'm nuts playing with Digital Barbie Dolls... and want no part in this... ( the fools ).... respect and admire everyone that is part of this forum, and believes it is time to get with it and join in the fun of producing an actual model to share with others without restrictions.... "must be Poser compatible without 2 or three conversions." Now.... any suggestions? Everyones stuff is just outstanding and I'm ready to learn...or at least try to cram something else into this getting older by the minute, brain cells dying quicker by the day, head of mine.

I've been meaning to pick up a copy of Amorphium. It's cheap, and people have succeeded in doing morphs with it. PV

Inspire3D is good for $500.00 -JH

Really depends what you want to make you could try cinema 4D GO it doesn't do morph targets but its excelent for modeling and making clothes....you can find some examples at my site...99% of the stuff and all the clothing is made in cinema and its only $199 so it'll leave change for bryce :o)....no problems using the stuff in poser it'll export in obj and will make morphs for your models but not for the existing ones.....Steve www.poserworld.com

Bill, Before you BUY you can try some of the Demoware out there... Rhino3d has fully functional demoware (and you can do MTs on it pretty easily). It's main drawback is that you'll have to buy a separate rendering Engine like Bryce or something... You can use BRMT to render (Blue Moon Rendering Tools), which does have a high learning curve as it's a text based interface but does Renderman format (like about 70% of Hollywood uses). Rhino has about the flattest learning curve for modelling... (in my experience). http://www.rhino3d.com Organica is also a neat little modeller. I remember there was some excitement about it a while back. http://www.coolfun.com Blender is freeware. Saw it demoed at SIGGRAPH. It also comes with a RADIOSITY Rendering Engine which you must buy to get the key to use it... but it's pretty cheap. http://www.blender.nl

trueSpace 4 is an excellent piece of software for Poser. It has very good deformation (morph) tools. It contains advanced UV Mapping tools and has some freeware plugins that can do even more for it's UV capability (think having UV Mapper built into the program along with mesh unwrapping capabilities). The renders are very nice (look through the galleries) and support radiosity rendering. There is great potential for the materials (which i have only looked it briefly) as well as support for Layered Texturing. It has many organic modeling tools (such as PlastiForum and MetaBalls) along with NURBS support and Bones. It supports many file formats for import and export and can also save VRML 2.0 files and be used as a web browser for VRML pages. It does lack an OBJ file export (it has an import for OBJ) but there's an excellent utility on the Funstuff pages called Compose that converts COB (tS) to OBJ and vica versa. It's worth checking out at http://www.caligari.com There is a demo available.

TRUESPACE ALL THE WAY. IK, Radiosity, Volumetric lighting, bones, metaballs, NURBS, perface UV mapping, 3D paint, Bump map paint, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE. Go there now. http://www.caligari.com It is the MOST intuitive interface available. Communion

I use Ray Dream Studio 5.xx for modeling. I dont think its the best product for modeling but the price is cheap and it has some other really nice built in features besides just being a model program. It works well for what I have used it for. Clint - Ray Dreamers Forum

hey! have you forgotton everyone's favorite? nendo! you can also download a nendo demo (though you can only save in native nendo format). www.nichimen.com (isnt it?) blender is good, but it doesn't export anything but dxf, and that only if you buy the key, as grey mentioned. ray dream is good. ray dream is good for modelling and is a pretty hefty package in its own right, as renderer and such. with the new poser and obj patch, it does poser scenes and objects and morph targets. doesnt do much for materials and uvmapping, but you can edit the groups to add materials in a text editor, and use uvmapper to make nice maps. actually, i do believe metacreations has a ray dream demo on their site as well. dunno bout truespace4, but that is also a high-performance program. remember: try before you buy!

Rhino 3D Bill! It has a low learning curve and will do all those neat things you want, and it's not a resource hog. I will e-mail you later to tell you more about it, okay! Gotta go work now..... Radart.

I use the following Ray dream 3D, Amorphium, TrueSpace 2.0. All of these are really good at some things but leave something to be desired in another. for instance...TrueSpace 2.0 is really easy to work with, you can size and shape things by hand or by the numbers and it imports and exports very well, but any object with a boolian operation and poser won't read the uv's (mabey they fixed that in V4.0). Amorphium is ultra-easy but lacks alot in the detail department (there is alot of guess work involved). Ray Dream 3D is nice but I've found that the meshes it produces are not quite real enough for use in other progs. you would almost think they where some sort of polymesh, if you saw one you would know what I'm talking about. Hope this helps!

1, it's Free Form Modeller is UNIQUE and very powerful. 2. The Tutorials (Written by Erick Vera) are EXTREMELY well put together. 3. It works with PZ3 files... though the P4 features aren't yet supported...

If you are new to the whole concept of working in 3D environments, and want to jump right in and avoid the interface complexities of the really snazzy programs until later. I would have to agree that Nendo, is the way to go. I knew next to nothing about 3d modeling, and after 2 days with Nendo, I was cranking out... anything I could think of, ...fast! I am starting to look around at apps that provide more options now, but I credit Nendo with providing the bridge. Again.. www.nichimen.com

Nendo's the best deal for it's price. Subdivision modeling is also the best way to model for Poser.

Alias, This is a very old thread...I'm thinking August 1999? -JH.

But some of us are slow readers!