Brief update: they clarified the text on the promotion, and now it clearly states that in the event that they do not reach their goal, everyone's money will be refunded. So my original post was wrong--this is a zero-risk offer. 

The bar has gone up about 7% since I first posted at noon (it was at around 15%, now it's more like 22%). Yes, I have been taking periodic screenshots of the progress bar. So sue me.  ;)

Ideally, use Poser 5 with the Daz figures. I agree with what others have said here about Don and Judy--they aren't awful, but they aren't the sort of thing that you can use right out of the box (by default they look like aliens, or claymation characters), and P5 doesn't give you many tools to deform their meshs outside the face room. Even the face room is disappointing--"morph putty" is really just adjusting morph target dials by clicking and dragging on the figure. It's an imprecise way to build characters, because it's nearly impossible to limit your deformations to a small area or specific adjustments. Click and drag on the brow ridge, and you also deform the chin and mouth. It's easier to simply adjust the morph target dials manually (which is all the morph putty is doing, anyway). The DAZ characters with the morph packs have a LOT more morphs, both for the face and for the body (aside from breast and gential morphs, you'll have to do all your body adjustments for Don and Judy with magnets). That said, I think Poser 5 SR3 is worth buying for the cloth room alone, which totally blows away anything you could ever do with conforming clothing. It has a moderate learning curve, but it's worth investing time in. Vickie 3 with dynamic P5 simulated clothing is about as good as it gets. If you can only get one or the other for now, I'd start with the DAZ characters, however.

One of the keys to a good simulation is starting conditions. Like Phil said, it is absolutely critical that your cloth object has no self intersection (areas of the mesh that overlap other areas of the mesh), and no intersection with your figure/object. This is one area where the manual is downright anti-productive; in the cloth chapter it recommends dialing up Collision Offset and Depth if you are having trouble with objects poking through the mesh. This basically makes collisions occur before the cloth actually touches the collision object. Higher values can be problematic, because if you increase this distance to a value greater than the cloth's starting distance from the collision object (not hard to do with many articles of clothing), it's the same as having intersecting meshes. Well--almost the same... in this case, it will be tougher to see where the mesh is intersecting, because it may detect an intersection even though it's not visibly touching the collision object.

I'm still fairly new at this, but I've had some pretty good results already just playing around with cloth settings and Phil's Romatix cloak. I generally keep Collision Offset and Depth at their default values, however, and deal with object poke-through by increasing the mesh density of the cloth and adjusting other settings.

More people should use the cloth room. WIth a little work, it's capable of generating some amazingly detailed effects that you'll never get with conforming clothing.

Well, after playing around with the material editor some more, I went ahead and ordered Vue from Daz3D (they have it marked down--$30 off, so it matches E-on's Bryce sidegrade). I figured, what the heck? =) I had a totally love/hate relationship with trueSpace, Mike. Decent modeling tools (although I also have Rhino, which is better on almost every front), an absolutely beautiful renderer (very possibly the best renderer you can find for under $1000), but I hated the interface so much ended up selling my copy on ebay. Ugly floating toolbars everywhere, no consitency or sense of organization... I loved the renders, but hated working with it. Vue seems to be completely at the other end of the spectrum in that regard. Once you figure out how one thing works, you begin to find that everything else works in a very similar way.

Thanks a lot, Mike! I like the way they have functions layered in the interface like that, but it can make things difficult to find if you aren't familiar with the program. E-on should put the manual online as a PDF--that would really help me decide... =) I've used quite a few 3D apps over the years, and the Vue interface really impresses me. It's simple and streamlined without being ugly. Bryce, Carrara, and trueSpace all try to be too fancy, or look "artistic" without much regard for how users actually work. The Caligari folks (trueSpace) need to admit that a 4-view split screen is common because it works (although I see they've added one in ts5), and the 3D widgets are cumbersome and annoying. I hate having to pull out all those "trays" in Carrara--with large scenes, I can't view my scene heirarchy and look at the scene at the same time. Bryce is the King of Wasted Space--all sorts of unnecessarily big icons and empty white space around a view window that only takes up about 65% of your screen. Vue seems to put all the important stuff on the main screen without making a big production out of it. You get a large 4-way split view window, the heirarchy window (I like the layer organization--reminds me of Rhino), object properties... all the important stuff. They keep everything small, though, to maximize the size of the view window. That's good too. $199, huh? Pretty tempting...

Clint- check out page 260/261. They talk about domains briefly, and give an example of a log object (the cut ends have a wood grain shader applied to them; the outside of the log has a bark shader). I haven't tried this yet, so I can't attest to how it works, but my understanding of shader domains is that you have to make your shader a layer list shader and assign a mapping mode to enable them. Thus if your top component is "Multi Channel," domains will not be enabled. Try making your top channel "Layer List," then add "Parametric" below that, then "Multi Channel." Theoretically, this will give you domains to choose from. Check out the manual (page 305) for more info. I've been meaning to play around with this, actually- it's a great idea. Automatically splitting objects into logical shading domains could be a huge time-saver.

Nope... that will probably have to wait for the alleged Poser patch/plugin.

Cage- if you are doing a still render, then definitely import as an OBJ. It's easier, cleaner, and seems to work better. It leaves you in the cold for animating, though- for that you are stuck with the Poser plugin...

Ah, never mind- I figured it out. Word to the wise- that "Assume UV Coordinates are between 0 and 1" check box is the key. It needs to be checked on, or else the textures appear offset on the figure.

Ahhhh.... it all becomes clear to me now. =) Thanks, Spike!

How exactly do you change Carrara from OpenGL/D3D to software mode? Am I totally missing something? I am still in the process of RTFM-ing, so that is certainly a possibility, I guess... =)