Hi, I am new to 3D character animation. My questions are primemarely about royalties of the charters themselves. I ask this question, to help me decide if buying Poser software is feasible or not. Q. 1. When purchasing Poser, are there character that come with the software, and are they royalty free? Q. 2. Can you buy characters, that are royalty free, and were? Q. 3. Can you buy royalty free characters that are script ready? (Such as, Microsoft Agent Scripting Software ready.) I have seen MASS characters that look very much like Poser characters. I design web pages, and this would be a very good utility. For anybody that never heard of MASS. It freeware at, http://www.abhisoft.net/mass/ Well, thank you for reading my post.

I'm not an expert on copyright/royalty, but here's my take on it. Just to CMA...you would need to get a copy of the EULA for each product...Curious Labs has a copy on their web site if I'm not mistaken, as does DAZ, who creates many models and products for use in Poser Q1...I think yes...there are characters, and I think they are royalty free, as in you get the license to use them in your stuff...although you surely can't distribute them, sell them, or any of that stuff q2...yes..www.daz.3d and here..plus plenty of other sites sell stuff q3...script ready...Poser 4 with ProPack and Poser 5 support Python scripting..not sure of MASS..also FLASH export.

You can sell any image you make with Poser figures. I'm not sure about Daz. But it's probably similar. If you buy products from Brokers like the Market Place here and at DAZ. You'll have to check their rules and requirements. But Most people follow the same rules. The major NoNo is handing out or selling the geometry in any form or fashion. Unless you model the thing yourself in a modeling program. Poser is really great for making Web Graphics. One of it's strongest uses IMHO. ScottA

The renders/images you create are royalty free. The meshes you use in order to create the renders are not royalty free. You can not distribute the meshes in any way. You can images with the meshes, create morphs for the meshes, textures for the meshes, etc. and they are yours to do with as you want, but the meshes themselves are off limits. Script ready? Depends on what you use for scripting and how you plan to use the scripts. I'm not familiar with Microsoft Agent Scripting Software so I can't answer that question. Hope this helps!

have actually done the msagent - and just follow their guidlines when creating the animation (on msdn) for phonetics, animation, size etc. but have done so on a manual basis - have not seen anything to automate the transfer from 3d to msagent.

Is fairly simple though as most models come w/phenomes built in. and msagent site and msdn has tons of info for creating the agents from your bitmaps.

Hi, I didnt think Id get answers so quickly. Thank you, for answering this post. EULA, I dont want to read that again. A document written by lawyers, and can only be understood by lawyers. Thank you for the lead to DAZs though, sounds like a good place to start. The way I understand this, anything you create using Poser such as, JEPG, GIF, or AVI. Can be sold or distributed. Unless the character themselves specifies not for commercial use. Would that be at the place of purchase? The scripting part. I think I need to do more research. Im not sure how to identify the geometry or mesh. I dont want to mistakenly receive somebody elses peace of the pie, so to speak. Curzan, you said you have actually worked with MS Agent. You referred me to the msdn. I am not familiar with this term. Do you know a URL were I can get an overview of this term? Well, thank you for your responses, and hope to hear from you again.

it is Microsoft Developer support site. the actual page for msagent sdk is: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/nhp/Default.asp?contentid=28000443 msdn.microsoft.com is where you get .NET / Visual Studio, frontpage, component, data, access, etc. type information and developer kits. Sorry it took so long but was out of town this weekend. Good luck!

cruan, Thank you very much