My 2 cents, IncliningWirefree... Before you go completely down the road of 3DSMax, try the demos. Please. Maybe it's because we are only talking about modeling, but the one thing that we are overlooking completely in this discussion is when actually using the characters. Aside from creating the mesh geometries in your application of choice (Amapi, Animation:Master, Carrara, Cinema4D, LightWave, Maya, Max, Rhino, TrueSpace, XSI... et al.), you have to consider how you plan to move and animate them. When it comes to using characters, Poser has the distinct advantage of providing both a base model (which can be modified via morphs and part replacements) and the ability to move them about in 3D space. In all of the other programs, once you build the geometry (of points and polygons or splines) you still have to "rig" the figure before you can move it about. You need to do the old "shin-bone-connected-to-the-thigh-bone" and determine which polygons are affected by which bones, which are then connected to which other bones in a hierarchical arrangement. This is a time consuming task, but a necessary consideration when modeling your character. How you plan to move the figure later on (bend knees, flex muscles, etc.) pretty much determines how you will model it to begin with. (I myself don't do character modeling/rigging because it scares the beejezus out of me). 3DS Max comes with Character Studio to help with this. LightWave can do this with its built-in bones features. Project:Messiah is a stand alone application that plugs seamlessly into LW. Maya... well that's what a lot of the big time production houses use. Because of the big bucks associated with all this highend software, and the equally expensive character animation modules and plug-ins, a lot of modelers will create their characters in their application of choice and then bring them into Poser for rigging. I've seen figures created with LightWave (aren't Vicky/Mike modeled by DAZ and created in LW), Amapi and Rhino brought into Poser successfully. You also might want to have a look into Poser Pro Pack. Not sure if that is rendered obsolete by the release of Poser 5. Sorry for talking too much. Hope that was useful. :o) - M

Mind Over Matter
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