**YOU  WISH  !!

Wouldn't life be so much happier if Poser met Max a few years ago and had a baby.**

I have struggled between the two untill I am now contemplating suicide.

I first bought myself Bryce 3D and thought it was fantastic...but it couldn't create organic shapes

I was recommended to move over to Max which I have enjoyed up to a point.

It became necessary to get good quality figures fast, so I purchased Poser, which is compatable with Max. 

But I still have to wrestle between the two.

**I can't get my Max 7 models to talk ...Does anyone ??????? is there an equal to posers mimmic?????

I've heard of ventriloquist but does anyone use it????
**
Poser is the bees knees for models talking...........Mimmic with poser is fantastic. and so easy.

However can anyone get poser to render an animation to the same quality as it does a single frame??????

can anyone recommend an editing suite that will work with poser avi's???????

Maybe I am using the wrong codec from the list 

which poser codec works with pinnacle.9. ???????  I just get black screens in pinnacle with poser avi's and even pinnacle's tech team can't tell me why.

what can anyone suggest 30 fps or 25 in poser ???????  Tell me what you do and why !!

I try using bvh files in Poser and my figures, at the moment (V3)seem to jump miles into the air......I'm cracking 
up!!!!!

is there another program I should be using altogether......?????????

what does carrara do the others can't ???

what does cinema 4 do the others can't???

**Is there an all round 3D program out there that can ; ......  (Talk equivalant to Poser)..........    Walk (use bvh or Biped)    Render decently (like max or Daz studio).................   and will work in. and be edited without Hassle in a quality editer????

what do you use??????
**
I am just about to take the syonide tablets so please write me soon if you can sugge st       anyth in  g                  h e   l    p     f      u      l       l.

B  il  l  y         t h      e              ki     d.   .    .      .   .....  ...       .....    .....  .... ...     .....

Render a sequence of stills out of Poser - uncompressed ones like .tif or .bmp. Pinnicle should be able to import a still sequence. If it can't there are other free or cheap video programs that can do it and convert the files into a movie format Pinnacle can work with. Check the Pinnacle manuals/help to see what formats it imports. Depending on your settings you may even render out stills with alpha channels for convenient compositing. You can render at any FPS you want, but 30 FPS is normal for anything that will be shown on TV in the US (and other NTSC countries. If you're just doing something for the web 12 or 15 FPS will work fine. 25 FPS is oriented toward PAL (certain non-North American countries including all of Europe TV) standards. When using BVH files I often have to move the "body" where I want it to be. I only have to do it on the first frame. I'm not sure the technical reason why they don't all line up with the center of the Poser Universe but it's a relatively simple fix. Don't forget to scale the BVH files when you import them (the dialog box gives you this option). I regularly import Poser scenes into Lightwave. The talking part works fine, like any other thing I animate. I must admit I have no idea why Max 7 could work with an animated arm but not an animated "open mouth" (or any of the other things that get animated when talking). Are you creating the Mimic file first and then doing the rest of the animation in Poser or is your workflow something else?

Well in the short answer is NOT A FLAMING CHANCE IN HELL.

Bobasaur is right render out as .tif (alpha channel options are nice, but I cannot recall if pozer actually makes use of them), only use .bmp if you have no other option.  Go to google and search for 'open source compositing'

I would suggest Jahshaka http://www.jahshaka.org/

It's open source and it's powerful.  There is a learning curve but its's a great app.

Now the **BAD NEWS. ** Max 7, nor 8 or 9, will ever support Pozer bones riggs.  The problem is on pozer's side.  The rigg used is basackwards to the rest of the 3D universe. This is something that will NEVER be fixed.  I have it on very good authority from the Autodesk camp that they consider pozer a bug ridden pile.  And they have no intention  of ever supporting it.

The reasons, 1 a mesh out of pozer is a god awful mesh.  There is no way to fix this, aside from  remodeling the whole mesh.   Attempts have been made to write converters, but pozer provides too little information and Max requires alot more info for the mesh and bones.  As you have found some things work and others don't,  your option, live with it.  That is all you can do.

1. Pozer's texture mapping is not properly read by max.  As a max user you know how detailed and powerful the texture struture is in max, pozer is dead simple in comparision.  I have  ALWAYS had to remap a pozer dork when I bring on into Max.  Plus having to bang down the mesh to get rid of the bloody creases.
2. The pozer rigg to max - EKKK.  it's nasty.  I throw out the pozer rig and make a new one in max.  There is just no way around it.  If you think v7 is bad wait till you try it in v9.  All the improvements that were made to the max rigg structure make pozer imports alot worse.  Some people have been able to import without too much trouble, but it's a dice roll.

You asked about other software, well there really isn't any (aside from Daz).  No one wants to write software in that price range.  People are complex modeles and the rigg is also complex so unless you want to spend $$$$ you are SOL.  The only think that comes to mind is Houdini from SideFX, but it's pricey and really only imports to XSI, Maya and Max.  You option - Learn to model you own charactes in Max or buy per made & per rigged models from TurboSquid.

As for the bvh files, most of those were made from banged down mo-cap data.  Or from a pain-stakingly made animation sequence from Max, XSI, or Maya.  There are  keys in the bvh data that pozer just does not understand.  You can try and edit them by hand, since most are just text files, but that is a but tricky.  The only other option is to use Pozer Only bvh data files, those will work most of the time.

Pozer is just a low low end 3D app, it was never ment to work with powerhouse 3D packages, and most of the 3D industry does not want to deal with pozer data.  That may seem harsh, but it's reality.

I am sorry if there are no solutions for you, but it's Pozer, what do you expect.

Good Luck

Spaz

Lightwave, via the Poser plug in, actually re-creates all the Poser files in .lwo format. It then uses Poser as a displacement plugin to move the parts around. When you import the files you can choose to triangulate the mesh, which certainly helps with some of the characters. You can then completely change the textures on the figures if you want but you can't change the mesh or rename anything. Unfortunately the Poser/Lightwave combination only works with ProPack and up to Lightwave 6.5.

billy.....
   
    There is one other option, but it requires a change of software.  Cinema 4D seems to have had some success in the import of pozer data.  There is a plugin for C4D called Riptide and that seems to do a very good job on import.  I have never used it so I have no 1st hand experience.  But you can ask in the C4D forum and see how well it works.

I know you use max, but if you want to continue to use pozer, yopu may have to change apps.

Spaz..

I use Cinema 4D and Poser on the Mac, using an old OS9 plugin, but lately I've been using Kuroyume's InterPoser Pro for Cinema 4D (Mac & PC) which works really well--very stable and easy to use. There are a few features that Kuroyume is still working on, like IK and Point At, so I can't use it for everything yet, but otherwise it's great, and Kuroyume has been very responsive to questions & problems. http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/interposer_pro.html --Tim PS: I used Interposer on all but the speaking figure toward the end of the Part2 segment (QT and WMV): http://www.auroratrek.com/

I'm jumping in here late. Sorry.

Like many Poser users I went through the same torment as you did.

Up until recently my solution was to use Poser 4 pro pack and Max 3.1. The free plug-in worked wonderful despite the poser community almost unanimously denouncing it. But of course I was giving up many other features with this solution. The other Poser to Max solutions look interesting but I don’t like the idea of depending on a small company to be there for me on a big project.

A few months ago I switched to Max 8 Biped. I'm an experienced Max user but biped / skinning and the whole character creation thing was new to me. The learning curve was steep but I can now rig, pose, morph and animate as well as I was doing in Poser. Biped is very Poser like and has some really cool features.

I don’t use Aiko or Victoria so this of course made the choice easier (rigging them in Max would be too difficult I would think).

 Just my thoughts.