I am a game design artist; been using 3ds Max for the past 5 years or so. I am very comfortable with character modeling, texturing, etc. in 3ds Max. We are licensed currently with 3ds Max version 8. 

I am starting to make cinematics for a game I'm currently working on independently. I need models in a very nice natural environment with sky, clouds, etc. and lots of foliage.

Vue D'Esprit seems like the best solution for this. There is a plug in for max but it's very expensive and Vue is a better tool I think.

So if I go with Vue, then it may make sense to make my characters in Poser. My main issue is time. It looks like with Poser, I can get hair, clothes, and several different types of characters made and animated in at least one fifth of the time it would take me to do it all from scratch in Max.

SO MY MAIN QUESTION IS THIS...... How much control do I have over the customization of my characters in Poser? I've toyed with it some, but I don't know what it's full capabilities are. For example, if I want to make a character with a Rabbit's head and rabbit's feet but human looking body for example, is this even possible in Poser?  Am I stuck with the base model types it comes with ?  What about clothes?  Can I design my own clothes in Poser?  Lastly, can I tweak my models in Poser so they don't look so "POSERISH"? Most of the models I've seen made in poser look very STIFF and almost like mannequins. How much control do I have over making them look more relaxed and natural?

Thanks in advance.

the answer to most of yer questions is "yes". poser can animate and display characters very easily, and there are thousands of models available, whether clothing, rabbits, humans or other animals. the part about stiff, dead-faced zombies is harder to answer. most of the bad reputation that poser renders have is due to user error during posing, lighting and rendering, which ya can overcome with skill and experience. although the poser renderer is very slow and a few years behind the curve, all the tools already exist for getting a nice expressive face, and a dynamic or relaxed pose, depending on how well a given figure is supported in terms of morphs (parameter dials). most of the major figures are well-supported.

Poser works from loading characters, and morphs, but no real modelling abilities.
that said, you can buy new figures to use, so no you aren't limited ones included in poser. Most popular figures are sold by www.daz3d.com or so it seems, which include hundreds of morphs, giving a very large amount of control of the look, while ones from E-frontier tend to have less, but in both cases you can buy more morph packs, or make your own. it takes some work to create your own morphs (from scratch) if you decide to avoid the included ones. character packs (sold in marketplace here and other sites) for the figures are generally just saved sets of the morphs already included, some very good and well worth it.

you can't really model clothing in poser, but once made you can pose it, and even turn into dynamic clothing which looks more realistic, same for dynamic hair. 

in all, it's good for posing for a scene, and fully capable of rendering many things. Material room is very good, though lacking some higher end tools (using math nodes to place step by step actions instead of a text window or something to type formulas in to manipulate the shader). 

i still like poser as my main app for posing and dynamics, but that's about the end, as i switched to carrara5 for rendering, and lighting/shaders is never a great idea to export over, decent, but not up to what i try for in quality.

edit: if you intend to use poser for games, majority of figures included and sold are WAY too high poly to use, there may be a few low enough, but haven't seen

You can export the characters you made in Max and turn them into Poser characters. You'd have to rebone the characters though, Poser can only import .OBJ and .3DS (and the latter importer is yucky. .OBJ is Poser's native geometry format).
The morphs you made for expression and such also have to be exported one by one and imported into Poser.

You don't want to use Poser for rendering animations. Far too slow, and if you fill a scene with a nice environment, also far too crash-prone. Vue is a much better renderer when it comes to hi poly scenes (my Athlon64 4400x2 / 4 GB RAM rendered over 10 billion polys without a sweat in Vue 6 Infinite).

There are some gotchas. What parts of a Poser scene can be imported into Vue is dependent on the Vue version. For animations you'll want to use dynamic cloth, and probably dynamic hair - keyframing cloth and hair movement is quite time consuming. Vue 6 d'Esprit needs a plugin to import dynamic cloth and hair.

The animation tools in Poser are rather primitive compared to Max. So while you won't have to model, rig, clothe and texture a character like you have to do in Max, you will have to spend much more time in animating. On the other hand, if you can export BVH motion files from Max, those import in Poser pretty well. There are a couple of PoserPython scripts around that can help you clean up an imported BVH animation.

Hmm... so importing an animated character from Poser into Vue is not as straight forward as I may have thought.

It also sounds like you really can't just 'MAKE' clothes in Poser and that you can't 'MAKE' unique characters either. I don't want to make "rabbits", that was just an example. I might need to make a fantasy character with a human body and a frog's head. From what I'm hearing that may not be possible in Poser either. Correct me if I'm wrong.

But from how it sounds it may be better for me to stick with Max and spend the extra money and time to set up nature environments inside of Max.

Poser is NOT a modeling application. It's not impossible to model in Poser, but it's very, very hard to do.
Poser is exactly what the name says it is: a tool to pose existing characters (+ clothes, + hair).

A human character with a frog's head? Can be done. Provided that you have a model of a human character (several models come with the package) and a model of a frog. Individual body parts can be set visible or invisible, so if you set the head of the human to invisible, and all body parts of the frog except for the head (and eyes) are invisible too, you can position the frog head so that it takes the place of the human head.
But actually, this is something I'd do in Max. Take a human body and a frog head, position the head, and match the edges. Then export as .OBJ, import in Poser, and turn it into a figure (not too difficult).
Getting the frog's facial morphs back to work is the toughest job.

As for Max and Vue - there is a (free) exporter from Max directly to Vue, but I do not know if it supports animation. If it does, you could export your animated character from Max to Vue and render the environment and the character in Vue.
But in your case, Vue xStream is probably the easiest solution. Vue natural environments hosted in Max, with camera and light matching. Not cheap, however.

(As a side note, Vue xStream and either Max or Maya was used to create the jungle scenes in Pirates of the Carribean II. We're talking a professional tool here).

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_6_xstream/

***I am a game design artist; been using 3ds Max for the past 5 years or so. I am very comfortable with character modeling, texturing, etc. in 3ds Max. We are licensed currently with 3ds Max version 8.***  

Switch to Poser if you can do this? No way, stick to 3D Studio Max, most likely, Poser will only limit your creativity.

***I am starting to make cinematics for a game I'm currently working on independently. I need models in a very nice natural environment with sky, clouds, etc. and lots of foliage.

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You don't even need switch to Vue at all, here's your solution: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_6_xstream/

Quote - ***

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You don't even need switch to Vue at all, here's your solution: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_6_xstream/

Wow. I had no idea this existed. This may be the solution. Not sure how this could work, but it sounds appealing. Yeah, it sounds like Poser may limit my creativity.

As an organic character modeler, I'm used to 100% control of everything.

In Poser, If I need a human head with a frog's body, having to make a full frog and then hide the body and a full human and hide the head, etc. sounds very roundabout and potentially very limiting. Plus Poser is too high poly for me anyway, even for cinematics, I can envision insane render times, which would not be good.

But Vue inside of Max? Sounds good. I may look into this.

Attached Link: Poser Animation

Animating in Poser does have a few nice features that I am not sure some of the higher-end 3d apps have. Saving poses to the pose library for later use as keyframes Symmetry switching, right to left etc... the Walk Designer One of the big draw backs of animating in Poser is clothing poke-throughs, where the figures body pokes thru its clothes at extreme poses.

Quote - One of the big draw backs of animating in Poser is clothing poke-throughs, where the figures body pokes thru its clothes at extreme poses.

Wow. ok I did not know that Poser did not have dynamic cloth. That is a drawback and is probably what makes some of the models look stiff, like mannequins.

Also, 3ds Max can save poses , and there is a way to mirror animations if my memory serves me correctly.

This has all been very honest and relevant feedback. Thanks!!

nj

No poser does have dynamic cloth...poke through happens with conforming clothing...this is clothing which is already model, saved as figure and made to "conform to" the specific model it is made fore.

Dynamic clothing is made take advatage of the Dynamic Cloth room. 

In poser you can save poses and animations to the library.

However, I agree that your best solution would by the Vue Xtream bundle. 

Quote - > Quote - One of the big draw backs of animating in Poser is clothing poke-throughs, where the figures body pokes thru its clothes at extreme poses.

Wow. ok I did not know that Poser did not have dynamic cloth. That is a drawback and is probably what makes some of the models look stiff, like mannequins.

Also, 3ds Max can save poses , and there is a way to mirror animations if my memory serves me correctly.

This has all been very honest and relevant feedback. Thanks!!

nj

Hmmmm.. well yes, the obvious choice is to stick with Max, (which I love btw...Max is awesome).... and just work on my speed, keyboard shortcuts etc. until I can become a good speed modeler.

Then get Vue Xtream