Quote - ..Details like doors and windows, may vary somewhat in placement and design, but it’s the bling, furnishings and accessories that differentiate between Sadam’s palace and your house, other than scale and location. All of that stuff is out there, often free, just not in Poser format. When it comes to bling as opposed to the rooms themselves, sometimes it seems like people are willing to spend countless hours tweaking stuff in Poser but can’t find a commode cause it’s not “for Poser.” The same thing goes for cars etc. You either get extremely lucky and find it for Poser, get lucky and find it in another format, or go wanting. Lighting fixtures, plumbing, store shelving, chip bags, jam jars, dog leashes, Coke machines, radiators, ATMs, eye drops … you may find one or two for Poser, but finding one in some other format and spending some time making it good or making it good enough may be a better bet. For mixing Poser content, a standard for scale, with guidelines for the various modeling programs might be helpful – beyond a rough ‘does Posette’s ass look big in this chair,’ but probably not gonna happen. Has anyone tried Sweet Home 3D for Poser or are the meshes unusable?.

I have purchased one interior set. I will never purchase another, because I don't use the one I bought...

Scale is the largest problem when dealing with Poser and "Real World" items. For instance, most items that I see that people create for Poser are not too real-world scales. That's easy to explain, since Poser's figures aren't to real world scales... They're slightly "off" and the standard joints don't help. (Though, weightmapping and heavy modification CAN render figures that are remotely human in proportion.)

You'll find this problem when downloading architectual models, as well - V4 can't sit comfortably in that hyper-realistically-scaled piece of furniture obtained directly from the manufacturer that manufactures that real-life piece of furniture because V4 is not a real-life person. :D

"Freebies" frequently don't pay any attention to scale problems. The modeler creates a trumpet that looks like a trumpet, but nobody could play because their fingers could never depress the valves while actually holding the trumpet properly... See? But, for the creator and most of the audience, they don't care too much about that - It's enough that it looks like a trumpet.

What that means is that you're frequently going to have to alter most models that your figures are going to interact with, unless those models are particularly well done and the artist has paid strict attention to Poser and its figure scales. Where Freebies are concerned, you'll frequently need to alter not only their materials, but their geometry, using a 3D app or magnets and deforming tools to accomplish the job.

 

On knick-knacks and bricka-brack - This is a definite problem for someone who likes to render realistic scenes. But, there's a very easy solution, so long as you don't mind lying a bit and your figure doesn't have to interact with the item very directly - Use transmapped planed with real-world images pasted on them. (Alpha mapped planes, planar images, whatever...)

So, you need a desk cluttered with crap, but don't want to spend the hours it would take to obtain all those models or model them yourslef? No problem! Go out on "teh interwebz" and use Google's Image search. Type in "cluttered desk" or "desk furnishings" or "pencil holder" or whatever else you need on that desk and find a good image of it. Take that image into Photoshop or Gimp and cut away all the garbage you don't need. Change the perspective to match the intended render, then make an alpha mask/transmap for that image, black where it should be transparent and white where the image should show. Load it onto a UVMapped primative plane using the material room, load the transmap and set the transparency to 1, position rescale and tile the plane however you need it to be and place it so that it appears to be resting on the desk. Whalla - Now you have a realistic stapler for your character to complain about!

You can do this with anything, so long as you can get a decent image and don't have to have the figure interacting with it in any three-dimensional fashion. Even then, you could conceivably find images that could successfully mimic such interaction, but that's a bit more difficult.

Don't worry about populating your scenes with fifty props that go nowhere and do nothing but add to the ambience. Instead, use planars for simple stuff and you'll find that your scenes will "pop" a bit more realism.

 

Note: If you subscribe to mags like 3D Artist, you can find lots of free items in there by quality artists like Stonemason. I have several of his Science Fiction sets from those sorts of mags and they're awesome!