so i know that you're gonna lose the procedural texturing you get from poser, including baggins stuff.  but how hard otherwise to translate from one to another?  will blender render scenes as large as you might make with poser?  i mean, poser isn't the greatest renderer ever, but it does handle gigantic scenes that some others don't even touch, and relatively quickly.
any tuts or anything you might point to about translating from poser to blender?
gracias.

Which renderer are you using in Blender?

And have you tried Kerkythea? Only challenge in that one is transmapped hair, but i think they've even got that sorted.

 How large is large? ;-)  To get an idea of what Blender can do, have a look at this guys site at the link below. The site is originally in Polish but there is an English translation button if you need to use it. Everything done in Blender.

http://www.gucias.republika.pl/katalog/katalogen.html

Alternatively, take a look at the Blenderartists gallery to see what can be done.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=27

Probably not your cup of tea, but this guy is phenomenal and uses Blender exlusively:

http://www.airart3d.com/New_in_Gallery/index.html

Not attempted Blenders nodes yet because it scares the H*** out of me. Then again so does Poser's

 Here's one that gives a better sense of size: http://montagestudio.org/wp-content/gallery/js/MobasCity.jpg

 cool thanks i'm checking it out
i don't know what renderer i'll be using yet, i'm just spelunking with renders native one right now
they all look good really

I still keep meaning to play with kerythea, but my general thoughts on render engines I have tried -

Don't underestimate the internal renderer - especially once you get the hang on nodes, it works very well and can cope with high scale.

I've used indigo quite a bit it can cope with a fair bit of scale, but does hog memory, also as it's an unbiased renderer it's slow.

I've played a little with LuxRender a bit too, it's quite good so far, but I haven't thrown any large scale scenes at it.

Blender's internal renderer is much more efficient than Poser's.  and most renderers Blender works with are more efficient than the Blender internal renderer.

most of the Blender images, Indigo images, and LuxRender images have been about an order of magnitude more complex than just about any Poser image i've seen.  to be honest, large scenes are a Poser weakness, not strength, and i've never heard of a renderer that doesn't out perform Poser in that respect, including D|S.  maybe you could give some examples of what Poser could do that another app couldn't?

will you have to learn a whole new way to work with materials if you switch renderers?  yes.  afaik, that's true if you go from Blender internal to Indigo, even if you use Blender to set up the scene for both.  just start small and build your knowledge step by step.

i think the big issue is material zone count.  because Poser itself is less efficient (can't create multiples, for instance), and because the Poser community has a lot of inefficient habits like extra material zones that hardly anyone uses, Poser models often have a lot of material zones.  iirc, Blender 2.49 and lower (i'm not sure about 2.5) only allows 12 material zones per object.  so you might lose some zones going from Poser to Blender.  that said, i've only used V4 (for instance) as a mannequin, and i've seen lots of zones on her, so maybe it's not a problem.

some words of advice with the cameras and the scene:

• center your focus (main figure, main object, etc).
• when importing things to Blender, scale up by 10 (it's easy to remember, and neither too big nor too small to work with)
• in Blender, put your cursor at the focus.  if its center point is at 0, 0, 0, that's easier to do.
• when you select and transform your rendering camera, use local co-ordinates and rotate about the cursor.  that way translating along local z will allow you to zoom, and rotating will keep your subject in the frame.
• before rendering, make sure your camera is at aperture for your distance.  for instance, you want something larger than 35mm for  a close up, and lower than 35 mm for a really wide angle.  
• give your rendering size the appropriate ratio for your scene.  for instance, don't use 600 x 800 for a wide, panoramic scene.  try something more like 800 x 400. 

Not sure if I'm addressing this correctly (re: the material zone limitation) but really V4's material zones can be condensed ... I really only have 6 for the main body. Then the eye would be a separate object: there's like, what? 5 or six there?
The really fun bit is going to be translating Poser shader nodes to Blender's node system, which at first glance looks a bit like Daz Studio's.

Really need a LOT more hours in the day.

But I think that is sage advice: start with a simple object with a few materials and work up from there.

Hi,
blender's limit was 16 up to 2.49. That was not a limitation of the renderer, but more of
the modeler / main program, so you loose information as soon as you have imported
the .obj files into blender.

I think (hope?) this limitation has been dropped in blender 2.50, at least I could not
find the corresponding limit definition in the source any more.

And yes, I've also through about if Poser's nodes could be implemented in blender.
As blender is open source, technically it should be possible, but I'm not as deep
inside it in order to estimate the effort required.

Best regards,
   Michael

 I believe the 16 zone limit is redundant in 2.5. I remember seeing an another forum that it is upwards of 5000 but there is a top limit which I can't remember off the top of my head. More than enough  for anyone I should think.

Attached Link: http://vray.cgdo.ru/