ok it worked. first i tried to import into poser, then export as an object and re-import but that didnt work at all. what finally did it is collapsing the stack in 3dsmax. dragontales i owe you bigtime. im still a newbie at modelling, but this is a huge breakthrough for me because ive been having so many problems with boolean operations resulting in degenerate facets when imported into poser. now i can finish up my dwarven warriors. thanks everyone for the help, its great to have a community like this where you can post some pretty obscure questions (believe me i searched the web for an answer before i posted it here and found nothing at all) and get an answer within minutes.