Recently a neighbor of mine paised at my Poser vigilance; saying I would be reveled by fans of the game Second Life! 

I guess he wants to come into Poser, for the game; but I've never played, and am interested to hear from our perpective?

=  )

A few friends of mine are into SL.  From what I've seen of it, there would be a lot of problems using Poser figures since SL stuff is very low poly.

How about SL.CR2s?

You can see how SL works with 3d models here:

SL Wiki

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I have experience making content for SL. With the exception of textures and animations SL does not import anything, everything is made in world. All avatars are based on two basic models which are morphed, similar to Poser figures. (This doesn't include avatars with 3d prop attachments which are made in world)

Most clothing in SL is just trans mapped textures applied to clothing layers built into these base models.

Poser can be used to make animations... (Walks, dances... ahem... other things...) You Make your anim then export a BVH for upload to SL, but that is about the extent of synergy between the 2 programs.

What what I have heard, you must use SL's tools inside SL to create content for SL. You can't import. And it is lowpoly too.

I see there is a small treasure chest of 3D Second Life files, on the SL site!

Check out this free V3 texture, from Valea, called Natasha; converted to the SL Avatar UVs, I just did!

I've seen some killer textures for sl avatars, and that while a good start has a number of issues, and doesn't look that attractive. (No offense intended.)
Look at the corners of the mouth, and the width of the nostils for issues.

Textures for the sl figures MUST cover the specific polys that are used in modifying the characters.. otherwise you get things like a figure with large lips, but textures for them that bleed over, or don't reach the edges.

While you can create poses and animations in poser, and textures in any 2d paint utility, anything else must be created in sl, and characters cannot be imported in any way shape or form.

I've quite a number of things for sale in second life, and after a year's time, MIGHT have made maybe $75.. for many hours work.

If you create things for sl, don't plan on getting rich, or even possibly pay for land in sl. The time investment was a waste of time.

if I had to figure out the money I made vs the manhours used, I'd say I was making a quarter ($.25) an hour.
 
It was amusing, but the constant server issues and changes, couples with learning a whole new 3d building and scripting system just wasn;t worth the time invloved.

Coming from Proprietary 3D to Proprietary 3D, I did'nt think there would even be anything to load into Poser; never mind actual textures, geometries, and I even found the .Cr2 late last night.  So, for a few hours work, I'd say we're on the right track!  Else, here is about all you'd have gotten from the Poser/SL default effort.

I, personally, woul'nt create anything for less than about $75; a pop!  The technique I used to adapt this V3 texture to SL would have worked from anyone personal photograph(s.)  So the reality is that personalized content is on the horizon; which is all we wanted to know.  Now we will get to actually putting Us into SL!

*"characters cannot be imported in any way shape or form."

*I's imagine the game installs/requires on an .OBJ somewhere.  My guess is that replacing it, like replacing a Poser Figure.OBJ, will have the same effect?

Nope. Second life has it's character built into the code.. they only way thier shape or appearance is changed is by textures or worn primitives textures to look like other shapes.

Really advanced characters are scripted, the original obj character is sized down and rolled into a ball, and primitives are attached and scripted to simulate what appears to be a normal shacreter walking around, dancing, eating, ect. Regular poses no longer work, and a hud needs to be written to control the figure's animation based on scripts, so the character can only do whatever it's scripted to do.

You can't import morphs into sl, and you can;t replace the object that's used for the characters. (the male and female character are actually the same badly uv mapped obj file.)

You could easily take a picture of your own face, and massage in it photoshop or such to look like you in second life, but the whole point of sl is being and doing things that you cannot do in second life.

Plus you have to pay for every texture yo create to be loaded into second life.. so if you didn;t get it right the first time, be prepared to upload it a few times before you nail it down.

All this is covered in the second life forums, BTW.

Avid SL user here, I sustain my self inside SL using poser, but all I can (or will do)  is to make various art pices that I sell, work good thus far, not rich but I get along :) secondly I make animations with poser for SL, this is tricky and time consuming but rewarded at times with sales. I have tried just for fun to PhotoShop some poser skin textures but find this process to be way to time consuming to be worth the headace, a face is simple but a full body texture is much harder work to make it look good. There is some really good UV maps for PhotoShop with all the seems and alpha layers etc if you like to tackle it.

A note on animations, since the poser avis ( you can dl them for poser)  are as stated above low poly you can't make the animations as detailed as you can in Poser, I.e no expressions, no finger movements etc, so if you will try to make animations for sl only use the SL avis when making animations for SL. 

Ps/ don't forget to stock up on valium , becuse your nerves will bolt on you ;)