I'm looking for an easy ability to paint on 3D objects in Poser 9. Is there an application or plugin that is fairly easy to use and very affordable out there?

There is no plug-in for Poser that allows 3D painting. You can however take a Poser model into another application and paint on it and then use the diffuse, displacement, etc. maps in Poser.

No solution is "very afforadable". "Easy to use" depends on the user.

realityPaint (formerly Blacksmith3D) is one popular option. I think it's probably the cheapest.

zbrush of course is an option.

There are other painting apps like Mari & others.

Some high-end 3D applications have painting capabilities built-in.

And then to a limited degree, you can paint on 3D models in newer versions of Photoshop.

Blender will do painting on 3D models. And it's free....just be prepared to cry a little at first. LOL

Laurie

Thanks for the input andolaurina and LaurieA. Now let me back up a little bit and ask a related question:

Which modler program of the free or less expensive variety does a good job of rendering objects so that they glow, appear to eminate light? I use, or want to use, this option a lot where I have a sphere or a flame or some other object glow with light and Poser 9 seems to be wanting in this area.

Does Blender do a good job with this?

Poser 9 can do that for sure. If it's something glowing in the dark, you just have to turn the ambient channel on in the material room and turn IDL on in your render settings. If it's something glowing in dim or regular light, you can try the same method, but likely you'll have to add some point lights parented to your object to get a good effect.

If that still doesn't work for you, you can try the reality (Lux Render) plug-in for Poser in which you can create light emitters that might suit your needs. You can buy that here at Renderosity. You can PM Pret-a-3D, tell him what you're trying to do & he can give you more details.

The high-end expensive apps can all do it. I would imagine that Blender can do it as well. I've installed Blender but I don't use it at all.

I can't speak to DAZ Studio, but you can ask around over in the DS forums and see if someone can give you more info.

Poser 9 will definitely glow ;). Just make sure IDL is on and your ambience is MORE than 1.00. As for Luxrender....the Pose2Lux exporter for going from Poser to Luxrender is still free ;).

Laurie

Ok... I guess I need this: If someone wouldn't mind doing this for me it would be a big help:

Please show me a translucent and transparent blue sphere that glows and gives off a blueish light in Blender vs the same in Poser (I have Poser 9). And then tell me how much time and effort was given to each application to produce its best work.

If I could see a side by side it would be very helpful especially when also comparing the effort between the two.

Thanks to anyone who is willing to do this for me.

For 99% of the "Can you do X in Blender?" The answer is YES.
But it's not easy. Blender is now on the scale of top tier apps like Maya and 3DS. Blender does things right from the DL that require expensive plugin's on the others already expensive apps, and the only cost is the download time and the learning curve.

Something you have to deal with in any 3D App.

As far as "How do I do X?" I've found it difficult to NOT find the answer on YouTube.

If you're just not getting one tutorial, try another and eventually some one will already have explained it the way you need it.

I've done limited glowing in Poser by setting the ambient color. I don't render any work in Poser since Blender's Cycle renderer is faster.

Most cost effective 3D painter is 3dcoat (also a pretty good modelling/sculpting tool) Best is probably Mari but that is really expensive. ZBrush can work ok for the job if you already have it but not a good buy just for texturing.

As for glowing objects, there are two different things here. One is the light from the object cast on surroundings. This you can do in various ways in Poser eg one way is to crank up the ambient on the object's material and use IDL. You can also fake it with lights in some cases. The other thing is the actual 'glow' (or halo/bloom) that surrounds light sources and objects that are brightly lit. This you can't do easily in Poser. Some people have tried various hacks for it (like using extra meshes) but they are not really very convincing. Your best bet to do it with Poser is to do it in postwork, which is how most people do it anyways, even in high end apps.

Just the other day I was talking to a friend who does python scripting & suggested the same thing.  I'd love to have a script/plugin that would allow for 3d painting right inside Poser.  I think this would be a great tool for Poser users, but it would not be easy to accomplish.

The others have given you some good advice.  I'd like too add though that Google is your friend.  You can find anything on Google if you can think of various ways to mix your keywords.  If one set of keywords don't get the results you want, try something different.  There are tons of information on the subject.  Do your homework, shop around, test some products in your price range (most have demos), and then decide what works best for you.

ive tried zbrush, im sure its really good if you can spend 6months getting to know it,but i have to say the best ive found is mudbox,its got the best bits of zbrush while being very easy to use, and once you get your head around the layers system it uses you will really enjoy painting with it :-)

hope that helps