The biggest advantages to POSER are its price and ease of use. However, I've noticed that there seems to be a big difference in the quality of renders done with poser files in other programs. I saw one today done by Vue d'esprit of poser pz3 files and the difference was startling. The question is; What other programs do better jobs rendering poser files?

If you buy the Poser Pro Pack (PPP) you can take your poser scene and or animation directly in Lightwave (my favorite) and 3D Max (decent if you have the MetalRay renderer). Other routes are not as nice and easy. Rumor has it that Cinema4D plugin for PPP is coming.

I have been doing some work recently in rendering with Bryce 4. The two programs work quite well together and there are more and more third party plug ins coming up all the time.

I like Bryce 4 (but then that's all I have besides poser, lol) One advantage to Bryce is the reasonable price tag.

i have at work , vue , bryce , poser and 3dmax , but i cant seem to get the trans map from like vic to import, all ells mat works like a carm , but i cant get it to work , so you can imagine the pics i get out of that , it suck Realy need help tnx in advance Cat

hmmm SANDELFIORD maybe you could repost your comment in the 3D applications or 3D Max forum. Surely someone has some help for that. I know it works fine in Lightwave.

You can render in any app that will open the file formats exported by Poser. Most people seem to prefer the OBJ format, but there is a number of good conversion apps out there. The best renderers are those that use true raytracing (although Vue's hybrid renderer delivers excellent renders and has many fans - myself among them ;-) ). So look for OBJ import (or a good conv app), raytracing, and a realistic price. You'll find most of "the usual suspects" listed under the "Software Forums".

it's not entirely true that you can render poser stuff in anything that supports obj. Amapi 6, for instance, supports obj import and export but doesn't bring in maps in any useable fashion. Carrara is really really hard to do transparency in, and vue 3.1 has limits on transparency levels as well (although I understand 4 has eliminated this). So strictly speaking you can "render" but different apps have different levels of MAT support. Bryce and Vue are similarly priced and both seem to do a nice job with poser figures--each has plusses and minuses. I've seen some really gorgeous renders of poser figures done in Truespace as well, but I just can't figure out the interface in the demo so I haven't tried that one. Lightwave renders are gorgeous, of course--you get what you pay for! :) I'd recommend trying out the demos of bryce & vue to start with and see which you like better. MaryCanary