oh, thanks!  both statements are true: i'm using Poser and Blender on Linux, and I would like to move to either doing half of my rendering from Blender or almost all.  especially once PyNodes return to the main trunk.  Matmatic is one of the big advantages to using Poser Blender always has a Linux version if there's a Windows version, though the converse isn't always true.  they tend to support the OS community first.  same is true for a lot of the OS renderers and Blender exporters. you can always count on the latest version of Blender being available for Linux distros. 

i'm sorry i couldn't find the problem on my own.  i looked some at the code, but just didn't know where to begin.  it's a prodigous program.