Keep in mind, and I am speaking from the prospective of having been at Siggraph, The major houses are running Max and Maya. The recent Pirates of the Carribean movie was done using Max and Maya. Some games houses want to see if you can model, texture and animate a figure from the ground up. I overheard the rep from Insomniac Games (Spyro the Dragon) tell a prospective employee just this.

We are talking Sony, Pixar (Who has a plug in for Max and Maya called Renderman), Lucasfilms, THX, Rhythm and Hues, etc...

Poser is a low-end application marketed to the Hobbyist segment ofthe population. Great for image work, but don't expect the studios and games house to take you seriously.

It isn't snobbery. Again another false assertion based on teh fact that the people making it have no clue what the big houses are using. Can you honest to the work that Disney did for "Chronicles of Narnia" in Poser? Disney needed 3 houses to pull this off (Sony Imageworks, ILM and Rhythm and Hues).

And Arcady, You are dead wrong about your assertion about Maya users and Warez. I know someone right now how is busting his arse working just to save up the money to purchase the program. So before you make such an accusation, you might want to think first. I could purchase Maya outright during tax time, should I chose too...