Modeling, sculpting and texturing: ZBrush. Yes, there is a learning curve (though not as steep as the non-user mantra would have you believe). But 'bang for bucks' it's without peer. With the new version about to hit (1 week and counting!), I suspect the posing capabilities will take Poser out of the equation for me. I love Poser but I'm afraid it's about to be overtaken by events.

UV's: UV Layout

Base mesh modeling and rendering: C4D. Once you get your head around 'tags', C4D can do just about everything. The add-on Hair module produces the most realistic cgi hair. The main down-side of C4D is the huge range of options you have with every aspect. There are too many to experiment with systematically, so effects are often the result of fortuitous fiddling, rather than deliberate tweaking.

Changing the virtual memory size does this. Put it back to its original setting .. you don't need much of a page file with that much ram at your disposal.

Thank you! The concept is fascinating .. I wonder if JPs can be changed during an animation? Hmm .. going to have a play right now. Thanks again.

Glad it works now. So let's see a screen shot then. Betcha the bar and horseshoe aren't as close together as in your original pics. I'm often wrong, but I always speak true.

Also, are you exporting the obj from Poser, or from the Geometries folder? Former bad, latter good.

I realise this is stating the blooming obvious, but the two screen shots show the magnet bar and magnet both almost touching and outside the effect zone. This won't create a particularly marked effect. You need to leave the magnet bar inside the sphere of influence, ideally,  and just move the horseshoe part of the magnet to create an effect.

Quote - I saved my file

 
Have you been tweaking the cr2 in a text editor? I get that message if I've been manually altering a character, prop or pose file, but missed a curley bracket out in the text, or inserted one in the wrong place (easy to do if you're cutting and pasting between two separate files). Fixing it relies on you remembering where you made alterations. Alternatively, you could grab a text comparison app from the web, and comparing the original file with the altered one. You did keep a copy of the original, right?

Yeah, get the demo. Once you've grabbed a smoke emitter in the preview window, moved it about, and watched as realistic smoke dances and wiggles in real time, you'll be totally hooked. 

My partner is totally uninterested in what I do on my computer. I can spend weeks lovingly creating a model, texturing it and rendering it .. leaves her completely cold. She once saw me trying to create a particular effect in particle illusion and I was shoved to one side and she spent a couple of hours playing with all the emitter libraries. It's that easy to use, and that much fun!

The most fun software I have ever used is called Particleillusion .. here: http://www.wondertouch.com/

The SE version is cheap, and you get hundreds of effects and emitters. Its engine creates 2D simulations of 3D particle effects (water, smoke, fire, explosions etc), so you get to see it in real-time. There are many many parameters you can tweak, and you can incorporate effects into static 2D images, or into animations. When you see the actual effects on your computer, it will blow your socks off. Some of the effects (though not all) are stunningly realistic.

The prog has nothing to do with Poser .. it's really best used when editing your final image as a post-effect.

4, 5 and 6. 

A combination of P4, UV Mapper and Phi Builder is the quickest and most accurate way to create rigged characters for Poser, imho. In P4 I can move an object around with Joint Editor turned on, making accurate fall-off's easier to get right. I've never been able to move characters around when the Joint Editor is active in any other version of Poser. I doubt I'll upgrade Poser until we get better rigging options.

One of the reasons I love Layout so much, is it can map obj's that don't have any existing groups assigned. So I can build a basic mesh in C4D or Silo, sculpt it in ZBrush, then open the obj in Layout. Layout has three screens .. an Edit screen where you see the unmapped model, a UV screen where you flatten parts of the mesh, and a 3d screen where you can fiddle with the mapped model. In the Edit screen you can move around the model, clicking on any edges you like, to split parts of the mesh (this is for mapping purposes only, and doesn't affect the actual geometry). So all splits and cuts are 'polygon perfect' .. there's no guessing required. In Mapper, splitting away parts of a model which don't have groups assigned is fiddly and rather 'hit'n'miss'. 

If you can assign groups in Max, which are recognised in Mapper, then you should save groups (eg shoulder, upper arm, lower arm etc) in your obj before sending the mesh to Mapper. In Layout, that's not necessary, though you can still open such grouped models (you have to use the 'Update' command to retain the existing groups when you save the mapped model out of Layout).

Hope that makes sense .. head over to the UV Mapper forum if you want more specific help.

"uvlayout look a bit pricey. Is it that good to use?"

Yes. Money-wise, I had to choose between updating C4D from 9.5 to 10, or getting UV Layout. No contest .. I'm using Layout all the time, and it's worth its weight in gold. UV Mapper and UV Layout do things differently, and there are some things I still use Mapper for (naming Group and Material parts, checking mesh integrity, out-putting UV templates and arranging the map layout), but for splitting and flattening, Layout is the new benchmark. Imho, of course.

"is UV Layout a stand alone tool?" 
Yes. www.uvlayout.com/index.php

"what about a figure of a person. Would you use cylindrical as well?"
Well, yes and no. If you're using UV Mapper, you'd need to split the map and use cylindrical mapping on the cylindrical shaped parts, such as arms, legs, torso, neck and digits. Spherical for the head. Planar for the hands and feet. But, the general move now, in 3d texturing, is towards 'pelt mapping', which splits a map in a more organic way. UV Layout allows you to smooth the map for something complicated like a human body in a more controlled manner than, for instance, UV Mapper.

There's a UV Mapper forum here at Rosity .. it would be worth your while having a poke around in there for UV tips.

The thing to always remember, with UV Mapper, is that it doesn't automatically give you the optimum mapping for an object. You have to tell it what to do. Planar projection is the wrong mapping method for a cylinder, for example .. use the cylindrical mapping method instead. If you look at your map above, you'll see the outer edges are all squished together. A cylindrical map, on the other hand, would spread those side polygons out so that your flat 2d texture will wrap around nicely (you could use planar on the top surfaces, though, as they're flat). 

I've fallen in love with a new UV program called UV Layout, which colour-codes all polygons as you unwrap them, so you can instantly see which ones are distorted.

The trick is to work on the obj from the Geometries folder. These obj's are not split .. splitting occurs when you load the CR2 in Poser (or Phi file, if you used Phi Builder to create the hierarchy). Poser uses the Group details to separate the 'actors' (body parts) by splitting them along the seams. There's a very good tutorial by diviner here http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=865 . It's for ZBrush > Poser, but should work for most modeling apps.