Many thanks!

That may be possible, wabe. Thanks again for the help!

I've tried exporting a simple plant animation to 3ds format... no luck. The plant mesh exports fine, but the wind animation doesn't. :( If gebe is correct, I also can't import 3ds animations to Vue. I wrote to e-on technical to see if there's anything that I've missed. Looks like I may have to render the plant/environment animation in Vue, throw the base mesh over to 3ds and the rendered Vue TGA sequence over to Combustion, animate the character(s) and props in 3ds max based on the position of the base Vue plant meshes, throw the rendered character animations at Combustion, and put it all together. Weee!

Thank you iloco! :) Vue4Pro is a nice landscape program and I'd still recommend it. I'm also happy with e-on for offering educational versions of the software, which is great for us poor college students. I don't use Poser because I feel that it ultimately takes something away from my ability to create the main focus of my render or animation. This isn't due to lower quality or stunted workflow with Poser, because admittedly I can't get the kind of output that most people can produce with Poser. Rather, if I use Poser I lose valuable practice hours. On the other hand, Vue is a lifesaver. While I know that I can model trees and so on, the ability to create compelling terrain and vegetation quickly leaves me free to focus on architectural detail and character modeling/rigging/animation. With this new Pro version I can import "custom" vegetation and sky maps to 3ds max, slap various shaders and materials on the vegetation, and get whatever sort of look I want. Much faster and usually of better quality than if I stuck with pushing the vertices myself. :)

I love the interface and output for Vue 4 Pro, and it handles 3ds max imports very well. Unfortunately, I have a problem where it sputters to a crawl after a while of use. This didn't get fixed with the latest update and I have to restart the program. :(

The Pro version of Vue 4 has Maya export cabability. I'm fairly certain that you're not able to export with earlier versions. Textures are exported as well as geometry.

Looks good - wishing I had a VHS player and a TV. :)

Link to Poser 5 with Vue 4 update: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Press/PR.php?date=June%2016,%202003 When I was starting out with 3ds max, I didn't have any ideas for scenes, etc. The whole thing was so overwhelming that it was difficult to plan anything. It's the difference between knowing the existence of and how to use only the black crayon in your crayon box and having a much larger palette to choose from. Yes, I can keep drawing really bad drawings in black crayon, but once I had used a good introduction and tutorial book such as Harnessing 3ds max 5 or even the Adobe Classroom in a Book series, it's tougher to go back to searching the forums and the give-and-take of posts. On the other hand, I'm not knocking the methods in which others learn, and I've found that tutorials and forums are GREAT for me AFTER I learn the basics of the software, but until then, it's a tower of Babel to me. It's just so much faster and easier with good intro books. That having been said, it looks like there aren't any good Poser and Vue books out there just yet. I checked out the Poser 5 Handbook tonight... yick. Decided not to buy it, will muddle through as best I can in the meantime and will focus on other software.

Thanks for the warning about Mortier's book, I may have looked into it more than I should have due to lack of other options. "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" sounds good, but doesn't sound like a guide for beginners. The version of WorldBuilder that comes with Digit 63 is actually WorldBuilder Pro 2.3. I have the disc sitting in front of me on CD. I hesitate to install it because I'd feel really, really stupid if it was a vastly better program than the Vue 4.x + Mover 4.x software that I just paid $250 for (I bought this combination partly because of the announced Poser 5 hooks, and partly because I really liked the UI in the demo version). Looks like Digit also includes a Painter 8 trial and Blander 2.27 this month. Thanks again for the warning about Mortier. I'm still pretty frustrated about the lack of resources for Vue and Poser, so I appreciate the help. :)

(sigh) Ah well; thanks for the reply. :)

It was right there. I was looking for it on my hard drive... apparently the installation program doesn't copy the PDF from the CD. I wouldn't have thought to look on the CD again, thank you very much. :)

(grin) That's the funniest thing I've heard for quite a while.

Depending on how you use them, Bryce is capable of making very memorable web backgrounds. If you have Photoshop or another raster graphic-editing program, you can cut out various pieces of your Bryce graphics and layer them however you want with an HTML or Flash editor.

Thank you! 3ds is used fairly widely in the game industry, but I didn't know if Poser was or not. Heh... 3ds can be pretty evil... maybe I'll be able to transfer some of what I learn over to something like Maya, but that's a couple of years away. The curve is slow and frustrating now. No matter what program(s) is/are being used, I'm continually amazed by the work that I see posted here. If, with practice, I can develop half of the kinds of things I've seen on Renderosity, then I'll be a happy guy. :)

Worked like a charm, thank you for the pointers and also for the background. The San Francisco hair is very cool.