operaguy...Your biggest point was about price and you mention 3DS Max has Vray, but I didn't see you mention the extra price to purchase Vray.
Besides that, I would stay clear of XSI...it is indeed a kick arse character animation package, but only if you fancy putting years of experience into it.
3DS Max, Maya...well there is a reason why 3-4yr degree courses are designed around these apps ;0)
To be honest, I would stay clear of Poser meshes for advanced animation in hi-end packages. You are going to get no where near what XSI/Maya/3DS Max is capable of, by importing a mesh that was designed for a totally different kind of animation system.

C4D, is fine...probably the quickest to get up to speed with, but compared to other systems MOCCA just doesn't quite get there.

Oh, and please don't think COLLADA is the Holy Grail for file translation...a Poser figure mesh will always be the same mesh and working with it for animation out of its native program will always cause headaches.

If I was you I would go with C4D...it's a nice app to work with, plays pretty well with Poser (due to 3rd party support), is pretty powerful and also has great integration with other 2D and 3D apps.

ZBrush...well thats another kettle of fish!

My personal pipeline: Model in Modo, adding detail with ZBrush (soon to be Modo 301 as well), rigging and rendering in Maya (also been known to use C4D). Saying all that, without doubt the best translation of Poser meshes within another software has been Vue. You lose your modelling with Vue...but as already mentioned there is Modo/Silo/Hexagon etc, etc.

It really does all depend what you want from your final output...if you will have clients breathing down your neck, asking for the best quality, then sure I would and have gone the Maya/XSI/3DS Max/Modo route...if all your going to be posting on a website (with the odd freelance work)...well, you won't go far wrong with Poser, Vue, Modo/Carrara combination.

I've been using animation packages of one sort or another for nearly the last 20 years, and I must say, for me, Modo is one of the best modelling packages I have used...don't discount it...in fact, give the demo a try and check out the great community over at Luxology.

Actually I have just written all this and find myself totally agreeing with wolf359's sentiments...but I'll be damned if I'm going to delete all that I've written now!

 

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