Pjz, in response I will post more detail about my mission in this project.

I am in pursuit of a master solution for what I do: storytelling in words, music and stylized-realism animation. That's where my passion and vision reside. It is not in photo-realism, or even the image as central focus. The story has central focus.

This will become more clear when I finish the first film, in Poser. That should be within 2 weeks.

Generally my scenes are one or two human characters interacting with body language, ordinary movement (like walking together) and facial expression. The models are clothed 90% of the time. I require dynamic hair and cloth. This project demands a large number of characters over the course of a series of short films, but no crowd scenes. The body types are not far removed from one another, no giants or way-muscled ones, etc. The faces, however, must be highly varied.

I have spent a lot of time determining if Poser or Carrara could satisfy my requirements, and while Carrara currently can't, Poser nearly can. What I seek in Max is only this: animation tools superior to Poser; more powerful hair and cloth simulation; lighting/render better and faster than Poser.

So, yes, I am hoping to latch on to the 'second half' of Max, not the whole thing. I don't want to model, nor make skin textures. I don't want to rig, for that matter. So I have the opposite perspective of you; far from worrying about being addicted to content, I am out to exploit the rich flow of content.

I purchased a BiPed-rigged human model from Turbosquid. It is great. By working with it for a weekend, I fell in love with Max's workflow for my mission-type. The animating environment, direct manipulation, etc., is wonderful; I like CharacterStudio and need nothing more than it. However, to stay with that model, I'd have to become a texture artist, as well as developing a full set of facial morphs.

My partner and I are in proof of concept of the "BiPed/V4" phase. If I discover, as you hint, that getting the V4 mesh to deform beautifully under translation with BiPed is a nightmare or even impossible, I will go to plan B. If successful, however, I believe I will have my master tools in hand.

Thank you for your comments.

::::: Opera :::::