Couldn't you just save the character to the library and then load the character into the new scene?

Or another thing you could do is save the file, and then
use File|Import|Poser Document/Prop

Quote - The black hole theory of infinite mass and zero volume per black hole isn't very logical IMHO.

Rationale:  How can the universe have billions plus black holes each with INFINITE mass?  There can be only one---hmmm heard that phrase somewhere---Jan 

Actually black holes don't have infinite mass. They have the mass of what-ever object
got mashed down to create them.  For example if a black hole was created by the
explosion of a large star in a super nova, the black hole would have what ever mass
of the star that wasn't blown out into space in the explosion.  In the centers of
some galaxies there are super massive black holes, but there the mass of those
black holes in just the mass of all the stars that clumped together to form it.
A micro-black hole would have a very tiny mass. 

But you are right about a black hole having zero volume, it is a singularity,
a single point in space with no width, height, or length.  You could think of it
as taking a Poser figure and setting the x,y, and z scale dimensions to zero.
It would still have all the vertices, but they would all be mashed down into a
single point that you wouldn't even see in a render.

Quote - On the starting runtime, here's a trick that seems to work but has disadvantages:

Close down with the chosen runtime in place.   Locate LibraryPrefs.xml
and set its attribute to read-only.   This will also make it impossible to add or
delete runtimes, but if your overall setup is constant this won't matter too much.

I suppose if you wanted to add or delete a runtime later on you could always just
change the xml back to read/write, alter the runtimes, and then change the xml
back to read only again afterwards.

What I do like about D|S is that is is easier to find and load content.  Poser has a very clunky
interface to the libraries, you have to double click through all sorts of folders to get to
something, and then double click your way back out again. A real pain.  With D|S,
you get an interface similar to Windows Explorer, much easier to use.   In some ways
Posing is also easier in D|S, in that the body parts of a figure are organized in a
more tree like set-up, making it easier to find a specific body part.  While with Poser
you have to wade through a laundry list of body parts to find the one you want to move.
But Poser has more options, such as the cloth room, set-up room, and a more versitile
material room, so Poser is my program of choice.  Just wish it was organized a little
better.

I also vote for 2.

Another thing is that shadows take forever to render.  From what I can tell of your light
control panel, you have 14 spot lights, each with ray traced shadows.  And there are a lot
of things in your scene.  So for every object in the scene, Poser has to calculate 14
different shadows for it.  So do you really need every single light casting a shadow?
Or could you maybe cheat and just have a few lights casting shadows, like maybe
the brightest lights or lights where there is a particular emphasis on certain objects.
Or even more drastic, do you really need 14 spot lights?  Perhaps maybe an infinite
light here or there would be sufficient, with again spot lights on objects you want to
emphasize.

Quote - wouldn't it be just easier to go the material room and select normals forward?

Doesn't help in the preview mode though.  Just works for the rendered image.
So there is the problem of seeing the model to pose it in the first place.

Are you using the Queue renderer to render on the same computer that you have your Poser
program on?  That's not really what it is intended for.  It supposed to be used with
other computers on a network as a render farm so that you can have several computers
doing the renders all at once.  So say you have 4 other computers in your network, in addition
to the one that has Poser installed on it.  Now try sending the animation frames to
those computers using the queue manager, and then try using your Poser computer
to render the same amount of frames with background render, and see which is faster.
If all you have is the one computer, then basically the queue renderer is useless and
you are better of just using the background renderer.

Actually DAZ Studio itself is free.  They do charge for plug-ins, but if all you want to do
is pose the model and then render it in Maya, DAZ Studio should be sufficient for that.
Poser as it comes out of the box offers goodies like a more advanced material room,
a cloth room for draping clothing props over the model, a hair room for creating hair,
and a set-up room for converting an object into a posable figure.  As far as I know,
DAZ Studio doesn't have these with the free version.
They both come with free figures. Poser has a wider selection though. If you are
looking for realism, you will probably need to buy the model separately.
Poser's latest models are Simon G2 and Sidney G2
Poser 7 comes with some Kozaburo hair models, as well as you being able to
create hair in the hair room.  With DAZ Studio you are limited to prop hair
and for something nice you have to buy it separately.

Quote - offhand...wouldn't that be about 500,000 colors?...;)

one thing I've always wondered...what are the names of all those colors?...;) I've always had a preference for mediummediumlightdarkmediumpuceargent...;)

If it is 6 bit then it would be 64x64x64=262,144 colors.

Where-as 8 bit would be 256x256x256=16,777,216 colors.

Interesting about the need to have inverse squared vs just linear falloff. 
Here is a simple scene with a cone, a sphere, the ground plane and
a point light embedded in another semi-transparent sphere.