I am determined to get V4 into Max fully functional. I am a fan of CharacterStudio (biped) as opposed to Max bones etc.,

I have  someone helping me fit BiPed into the V4 Mesh and enable it with Physique. Anyone's suggestions, tips, gotchas or warnings on that part of the project. are certainly welcome.

Tonight I'm asking for the general approach to getting the Transition (rotate, translate, scale) rig controllers, and the shaping morphs, and the expression/viseme morphs into Max as functioning Morph Modifiers.

I would have no objection to a requirement to export individual morphs from Poser (I actually don't know how to do that) and load them one at a time into Max and do whatever needs to be done to have them deform the mesh properly in Max.

I have PoserPro license and for Max my license is for Max2009.

Any advice, tips or even whole solutions welcome. I have a budget to pay for professional help on this project.

At the same time, if it should happen this this thread turns into a journal of this idea, for all to gain, that would be very pleasing.

I am going to cross-post in the Max forum but link to this thread.

::::: Opera :::::

I want to say that I am very aware that V4 is considered hi-poly for Max and that previously the wisdom has been to work with low-poly (7,000-18,000 count) mesh for animation, then to smooth, subdived or normal-map at render.

I have already determined that my needs as a story teller can adequately be served by a straight-forward import of the full V4 mesh with a selected set of morph modifiers. I've loaded four V4s Into the program (which is twice as many as I'll need) plus some architectuaral models with materials. The viewport response on my equipment with Max2009 was quite satisfactory. The gain in simplicity is attractive to me.

::::: Opera :::::

Should be interesting to watch your progress.

wayne k
guam usa

I can tell you up front that you're gonna have problems with many deformations that are controlled by Poser magnets, which I'm confident 3ds Max will not import.  V4 is a Poser-only figure, in my opinion.  All the breast movement for example, collarbone deformation of the breasts, and the inner elbow, and various other places simply will not work on import.  It will be a ton of work doing those by hand as well, especially in animation.  IMO you might as well model a figure from scratch, I think it would be about as much work.

Hi pjz

If it is a lot of work -- but just as much work to make "fresh mesh" properly rigged -- then the game is worth it to me. Either way I end up with a lot of work and a master figure.

However, if the mesh is V4, I am left with a straight shot fit for all V4-designed texture maps. I also have the entire library of V4 morphs, assuming there is no barrier to getting those in.

The cool thing is: I don't have to worry about ever manipulating my resulting figure back in Poser or Carrara since I am then "in Max." So, when fitting BiPed to the raw mesh, we can deform it some/a little to work with BiPed and not worry about it being backward compatible outside of Max.

Can you respond to that logic? I definitely welcome all warnings and gotchas.

Thanks pjz.

You are trading the convenience of being able to use somebody else's work for modeling, uvmapping and texturing - in exchange:
- you must rig and weight a 60k poly figure yourself

• you must design MANY MANY joint-driven morphs for a 60k poly figure yourself
• the results won't be redistributable (derivative work, although if you have a student license for Max that's already binding you anyway)
• you will have learned nothing about modeling, uvmapping and texturing (valuable skills you could use every single day)
• you will remain addicted to purchasing content that you could model and texture yourself (and even sell for a profit!)

Have you done a texture for V4?  Do you know how difficult that UVmap is to work with even if you have a good projection painting suite (I have, teamed with jjroland, and I do).  Have you taken a really good look at commercial textures out there?  Have you noticed some of the flaws that are ubiquitous even in the DAZ flagship textures?

You have vision and passion, why settle for somebody else's vision and try to adapt it to your own?  The work of designing your own character from scratch is hard, and there is a lot of distraction and not-so-helpful information out there, but the path you're already considering is drastically harder than you think it is anyway.  It boils down to how much work you're willing to put into fixing the many, many problems you're going to encounter, rather than start from scratch and avoid most of those problems in exchange for different problems that imo will be easier to solve.  To me, it is more frustrating to overcome the many inherent problems of trying to adapt somebody else's character content rather than just model and rig my own from scratch.  Looking back I wish I had spent a lot more time learning the skills required for doing this myself, rather than trying to adapt somebody else's results and failing repeatedly.

Pjz, in response I will post more detail about my mission in this project.

I am in pursuit of a master solution for what I do: storytelling in words, music and stylized-realism animation. That's where my passion and vision reside. It is not in photo-realism, or even the image as central focus. The story has central focus.

This will become more clear when I finish the first film, in Poser. That should be within 2 weeks.

Generally my scenes are one or two human characters interacting with body language, ordinary movement (like walking together) and facial expression. The models are clothed 90% of the time. I require dynamic hair and cloth. This project demands a large number of characters over the course of a series of short films, but no crowd scenes. The body types are not far removed from one another, no giants or way-muscled ones, etc. The faces, however, must be highly varied.

I have spent a lot of time determining if Poser or Carrara could satisfy my requirements, and while Carrara currently can't, Poser nearly can. What I seek in Max is only this: animation tools superior to Poser; more powerful hair and cloth simulation; lighting/render better and faster than Poser.

So, yes, I am hoping to latch on to the 'second half' of Max, not the whole thing. I don't want to model, nor make skin textures. I don't want to rig, for that matter. So I have the opposite perspective of you; far from worrying about being addicted to content, I am out to exploit the rich flow of content.

I purchased a BiPed-rigged human model from Turbosquid. It is great. By working with it for a weekend, I fell in love with Max's workflow for my mission-type. The animating environment, direct manipulation, etc., is wonderful; I like CharacterStudio and need nothing more than it. However, to stay with that model, I'd have to become a texture artist, as well as developing a full set of facial morphs.

My partner and I are in proof of concept of the "BiPed/V4" phase. If I discover, as you hint, that getting the V4 mesh to deform beautifully under translation with BiPed is a nightmare or even impossible, I will go to plan B. If successful, however, I believe I will have my master tools in hand.

Thank you for your comments.

::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: A New Judy Frankenstein is in the Offing!

Back to my issue about the expression morphs.....

I've heard a few people say this program works. It has no ambitions on rig, only the mesh and the morphs, and I guess the materials!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53935&

I'm going to try it.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - Have you done a texture for V4?  Do you know how difficult that UVmap is to work with even if you have a good projection painting suite (I have, teamed with jjroland, and I do).  Have you taken a really good look at commercial textures out there?  Have you noticed some of the flaws that are ubiquitous even in the DAZ flagship textures?

Poser textures have to be reworked to make use of fastskin anyways as they have SSS baked into them and this has to be removed so that fastskin can use it's own SSS instead.

The UV map thing is not an issue because you can always slap on whatever UV map you want on V4 and use texture baking to transfer textures from one UV map to another. Once you have your texture transferred to a sane UV map, you can then work on it in regular image editors. The reverse can also be done if you want to sell a V4 texture or something.

And rigging poser meshes is pretty easy if you start with COLLADA. That imports a mesh that's already rigged somewhat decently and you only have to make minor corrections to the weights.

Thanks dphoadley, I've been watching your project. I am a fan of Judy as you might know. I'll send you an email tonight when I get home; no access to email at the moment.

:: og :::

I'm inclined to agree with pjz99. I'm not quite sure why you want to exclusively use V4. I've imported almost every Poser figure (from Don and Judy to V4 and Apollo Maximus) into 3DSMax for comparison. I wanted to see surface topology and poly counts because I want to learn how the pros create figures. My favorites to date are actually James and Jessie. Reasonable poly count, nice surface topology, easier to rig IMO than even V2 or 3 and texture maps are understandable. V4 is a complete mystery to me. If you've managed to have a fully textured V4 in Max then I can see your reasoning. But what you save in UV mapping you'll lose more than  double in rigging.

Even if you don't want to model the figure yourself, there are quite a number of free human characters out there as you already know. I'm sure Turbosquid isn't the only repository out there.

Anyway, all this to say good luck with V4 if that's your final decision. I hope you'll let us know how it goes.

Quote - The UV map thing is not an issue because you can always slap on whatever UV map you want on V4 and use texture baking to transfer textures from one UV map to another. Once you have your texture transferred to a sane UV map, you can then work on it in regular image editors. The reverse can also be done if you want to sell a V4 texture or something.

Pardon me, but after having done a fair amount of UVmapping I don't think it's trivial to UVmap a 60k poly human figure, not at all.  Making a new UVmap that's better than what is already there (which frankly is not all that great for 2d image editing), for a model with this many polys, is a couple of months of work.

Quote - And rigging poser meshes is pretty easy if you start with COLLADA. That imports a mesh that's already rigged somewhat decently and you only have to make minor corrections to the weights.

If you've done this yourself, maybe you can show everyone how the inner elbows turned out; how the buttocks and hips look when the thighs are bent in either direction; how the collar movement looks; how the knees look when fully bent.

For those who might be interested, there is no need to map or remap V4.  I've already remapped V4 to take V3 textures.  You can find my UVS file for her here in the MP.

The reasons I favor V4 , and why the figure DPH is generating with the Judy body may not be good for me:

1. on my project I am counting on a stream of content, and nothing is as rich as that for V4. I am referring to skin texture maps and custom shaping morphs.

2. shapeliness. Given the V4 base mesh, and the shaping morphs, I can get the pleasing body shapes I want. While I said that mostly my characters are clothed, the females arms and shoulders are often bare. I have to have superb shape in that area. That's V4. Not V3, Jessie, James or even Judy.

I need both of the above; I know beautiful body shapes can be modeled with fresh mesh, but that would lock me out of (1) above.

::::: Opera :::::

OG you've already sold it to yourself.  Go on with it, best of luck.

bandolin thanks for you comments. Luckily, I'll have extremely fast feedback about the most challenging aspect of this project! I should know within a week or two at worse case, if rigging the V4 mesh with Biped and getting acceptable deformation when rotating and translating the rig is going to work or be an invitation to a nightmare.

My partner is at College here in Los Angeles for game design, and has tons of Max teachers, coaches and fellow students nearby. He is in dialog over the BiPedization of V4 right now.

::::: Opera :::::

pjz i've certainly sold myself on the worthiness of investing the next 2 weeks into this proof of concept. I've not sold myself it is certain to work.  Thanks

dphoadley i sent you an email from my yahoo account to yours

Quote - Pardon me, but after having done a fair amount of UVmapping I don't think it's trivial to UVmap a 60k poly human figure, not at all.  Making a new UVmap that's better than what is already there (which frankly is not all that great for 2d image editing), for a model with this many polys, is a couple of months of work.

You can use pelt mappers or proxy uv maps to name just two approaches that are pretty painless and fast. I'm not sure why you think it takes a couple of months to do this. Maybe you need to find better UV mapping tools ?

Quote - If you've done this yourself, maybe you can show everyone how the inner elbows turned out; how the buttocks and hips look when the thighs are bent in either direction; how the collar movement looks; how the knees look when fully bent.

You'll just have to take my word for it. I'm not gonna post my setups here just so some shameless merchant can go and nick them.

I'm familiar with pelt mapping (LCSM and ABF) and they do not unwrap a model with zero distortion.  A lot of manual fiddling is required.  Fixing inevitable distortions and achieving a really flat UVmap is not trivial or quick for a very high poly count figure.  I encourage you to take a stab at an improved UVmap for a 60k figure and show off your skills, if it's really as easy as you say.

Re: bending - Nobody's asking for your setup, just some sample pics of the results.

V4 took me close to four months to remap. and I was working on close to 12-16 hours a day!  The B---- has more vertices thatn she needs, and in places where nobody will ever think to render, -such as close to 50 -100 just between each toe.
DPH

Well, granted that in your case you had the big complication of making your new UVmap match V3's texture layout, but still, it's not a trivial task even if you have no such requirement.

If one were to ask me, (which no one did), V4 is an example of Turbosmooth gone beserk!  The mesh is so dense, that I constantly had to keep hiding large sections of so that my computer, and UV Mapper Pro could handle the load.  This of course hampered my ability to see the mesh as a whole as I worked.
DPH

What is really a bit sad is that the DAZ morphs were almost certainly designed with the low poly mesh.  You'll never get them though.
edit: ah, not that 17k polys is "low poly"...

Operaguy,
i think youre best option would be to use Paul Hormis Hyperriger.
Not only is paul one of the better riggers in the business, his scripts are one of the best solutions if you rigging for biped.
The hyperrigger script sets up a fully rigged solution with a very nice deformation system.
I use the scripts myself and the deformations you get out off it with V4 are the best you can get.
Trust me , you do not get the same results by weighting her by hand.
BTW weighting in max is done mostly with the skinmodifier instead of Physique.

http://www.hyperent.com/Hyp-Maxscripts.php

You guys probably know this already, but there is a low poly V4 obj (in fact 4 versions) in DAZ Studio.
C:Program FilesDAZStudiocontentdatablMilWom_v4b_68498LOD

Needs rigging but it's doable I hear with a couple free proggies and renders pretty nicely in the 17K version.
Someone posted a step by step here or over at DAZ.

Quote - Operaguy,
i think youre best option would be to use Paul Hormis Hyperriger.
Not only is paul one of the better riggers in the business, his scripts are one of the best solutions if you rigging for biped.
The hyperrigger script sets up a fully rigged solution with a very nice deformation system.
I use the scripts myself and the deformations you get out off it with V4 are the best you can get.
Trust me , you do not get the same results by weighting her by hand.
BTW weighting in max is done mostly with the skinmodifier instead of Physique.

http://www.hyperent.com/Hyp-Maxscripts.php

How is viewport interaction when animating with a complex rig applied to the full rez v4 mesh?
I don't have max, in xsi things slow down a good deal with one of the advanced rigs thrown on her. Otherwise she is fine with a simple skeleton enveloped and deforming the mesh.

wayne k
guam usa

I bought V4 out of curiosity, I don't think I've ever used the figure (lol). Is it really superior to V3?

@operaguy
You say you want to use V4 because of the amount of content available. V4's been around, what, 18 months? V3 for 3 years or so? Is there really already more content available for V4 than V3 (I say this with awe and surprise)? Because I've got about 3 gigs of V3 content, about 2/3 of which I haven't even gotten to use yet (lol). I'm asking because I'm about to delve into clothing content and I want to choose my figure carefully.

@ghonma
You say that UV mapping a 60K poly figure is not much work depending on the UV tools? I've used quite a few different methods and unwrapping that dense a figure has never been lickety-split, although I must admit I haven't used XSI, which I believe is your software of choice. There is a way you could give use a general overview of your work flow without giving too much away so fear of unwanted merchant appropriation could be lessened. I simply say this because the entire idea of a forum is sharing.

I viewed your gallery BTW and I like your stuff. Especially the worm under water, but I think you could have added to the atmosphere by adding caustics along with the DOF that is already there. I just wish you would post more of your artwork.

@ksanderson
Is there not a LPM of V4 in Poser? Why only D|S?

Quote -
@ksanderson
Is there not a LPM of V4 in Poser? Why only D|S?

Nope. DAZ put their flagship model in basic form and LOD in their software of choice which is D|S not Poser It's only an unrigged obj and DAZ has it work with V4 data in Studio. To use it in Poser requires some fiddling in the Setup room and using I think Morph Manager to re-do the CR2 file. There's a thread around here that tells how. Most people over in the DAZ forums don't know about it.

whkguamusa,
The script let's you work with a "driver mesh" and a "render mesh"
The rendermesh is skinwrapped over the driver mesh so typical you animate with a low res driver mesh and render the animation with the high res.
Therefore no viewport slowdowns.

Quote - whkguamusa,
The script let's you work with a "driver mesh" and a "render mesh"
The rendermesh is skinwrapped over the driver mesh so typical you animate with a low res driver mesh and render the animation with the high res.
Therefore no viewport slowdowns.

Sounds like a good way to go. Does it also drive blendshapes/morphs for facial animation & cover hair/cloth sims on the low res driver?

wayne k
guam usa

Here are two links to threads talking about the lo res V4. Scroll down... look for JoePublic's posts.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2747942&page=3

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2741796&page=10

**whkguamusa,
Yes, the drivermesh is splitup in a head & body so loading facialmorphs keeps the file "light"  , hair & displacement or normal maps etc, are only used on the high res rendermesh, cloth is typical skinwrapped to the low res driver mesh. **

I then loaded in the fully rigged figure I purchased. Viewport response was smooth. No hesitation grabbing the direct manipulation widgets and rotating/translating. Now, I can't say that this littel test is the equivelent to two V4s with BiPed, texture maps, hair and cloth. Finding that out will be part of this proof of concept.

Strides have been made along these lines in the last two upgrades to Max, 2008 and 2009. The 2008 release specifically was mostly about viewport response, due to feedback from production facilities having lag with a lot of assets in the viewport.

The combination of Autodesk attacking the viewport response (you can get shadows in the viewport in real time), my computer upgrade, and my light burden requirements -- says to me that with all due respect to the strategies of the past that centered around lo-res figures (at least until render time), my situation lets me operate with impunity. Pretty much as if I were in Poser!

I know that might sound like a deliberate attempt to insult. I assure you it is not. I have sincere respect for those strategies and proven production methods.

It happens that I am not in a "production" situation with this paradigm. It is more like a kid artist struggling along with beginner tools who sneaks into the master's workroom and gets to turn on the big toys.

Anyway.........I am intesely determined to get my base tools established for my project and get on with the movie making.

I'm running XPPro-64 with 8GIG RAM, Core2 Quad Q6600 with fast hard drives, Nvidia 8800 video card.

::::: Opera :::::

klozen, thank you for the link to that site with maxscripts pertinent to what I'm doing. I went over there quickly, drank in a little, will download and dig in. It's been a long day in the ""real world"" and I am wiped out, plus partner was at school today. Tomorrow we will be pushing ahead with this project and I'll send him to check out these scripts.**

::::: Opera :::::**

Quote - Tonight I'm asking for the general approach to getting the Transition (rotate, translate, scale) rig controllers, and the shaping morphs, and the expression/viseme morphs into Max as functioning Morph Modifiers.

When it comes to transferring morphs, I would go with Collada import/export because it carries over most of the morphs for you. As far as mesh rigging, you can have you friend collada exported mesh with a biped instead of bones.  Since Collada came out, I gave up using Pomax. Quick not though, I'm using D|S collada, not Poser collada to get my basic V4, textures and morphs out and into Max.

max doesn't work with bodyparts like poser, so for any little morph you have to have the entire mesh loaded. Putting all of those morphs into Max at once is a pretty good way to choke it up, so you'll have to be judicious about what you put in. But, you can still have a 'fully loaded' startup master saved.

If your biped is expertly rigged, with good joint parameters and falloff zones, you may not need poser's JCM's or figure out how to mimic magnets. I'm not even sure if Max supports the concept of JCM's. I don't have any rigging advice, since I never seriosly ventured in that direction with max.

I'm very curious though, what it is that Max will offer that Cararra won't, for what you're needing, is it the cloth sims?

Connie hi,

I exported V4 out of PoserPro using Collada export and did not get an option to create BiPed on import using FeelingSoft ColladaMax.  It gave me the rudiments of (I think it is called) max bones, no of which were linked up. I put that option aside. Are you saying that the D|S Collada export ends up giving you a BiPed rig on import into Max? (I'm not assuming a 'perfect' or no-tweak needed biped in any case.)

Second, the transfer of morphs will indeed be judicious. I am hoping to do my shaping in PoserPro for different characters, including male, so no shaping morphs need go over. After that, expression morphs you'd be suprised how few I use! Visemes, brow, eye squint, etc. Point well taken about the morph target burden, however. Thanks.

As you probably noticed, I was very hopeful and high on Carrara. But, no............at least not at this time. The animation tools are inferior to Poser's (my poser animation tools include a lot of Ockham scripts), there is no dynamic cloth module, and the hair module is not functional for animation (they may fix that.) Finally, access to MentalRay and VRay (costs another grand!) puts Carrara in the dust. And...the Max community and plugins....amazing.

I have the $3200 put aside. I am emotionally ready to pull that trigger. I just have to perform this proof of concept.

Thanks for your input.

::::: Opera :::::

By the way, one workflow that might be functional for me is: Shaping in PoserPro, export mesh as deformed, rig for BiPed in Max, no or few morph modifiers, and then attack facial animation with LipService.

http://lbrush.com/

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - 2) shapeliness. Given the V4 base mesh, and the shaping morphs, I can get the pleasing body shapes I want. While I said that mostly my characters are clothed, the females arms and shoulders are often bare. I have to have superb shape in that area. That's V4. Not V3, Jessie, James or even Judy.

If you're talking about her shoulder and neck bending that area of V4 is heavily magnet controlled, and one of the things taht you probably won't be able to transfer to Max at all. Without the magnets, it's bends are not any better then V3.

How well that particular element bend and looks in Max is going to heavy depend on how skilled your MAX rigger is, and how well he unnderstand poser rigging. Or how well he understands human antomy if he has to recreate this functionality from scratch.

Quote - Wayne I was worried about that for sure. So, I loaded many V4s into Max (just the mesh) see image attached.

I then loaded in the fully rigged figure I purchased. Viewport response was smooth. No hesitation grabbing the direct manipulation widgets and rotating/translating. Now, I can't say that this littel test is the equivelent to two V4s with BiPed, texture maps, hair and cloth. Finding that out will be part of this proof of concept.

A truer 'test' of what you;ll be up against is to transfer a fully rigged and morphed collada exported V4 into max.  The load on max and the computer and workflow will be very similar. Closer to comparing apples and apples.

For example, if you use fae morphs, and body morphs, you could easily end up with something similar to 100 copies of V4 in there - all in one scene object.   if that's the workflow that you go with - which is what most poser users tend to want to do - recreate their workflow in Max as much as they can.

What may be worth checking out ios if D|S will collada export lower poly version of V4.

Ok connie, thanks, i stand warned. A lot will be revealed over the next six days. I'm glad people have been willing to step up and forwarn me of these troubles ahead, and I am satisfied I can contain the damage to one or two weeks effort even if the ultimate result is failure or no net gain by the attempt.

Quote - I exported V4 out of PoserPro using Collada export and did not get an option to create BiPed on import using FeelingSoft ColladaMax.  It gave me the rudiments of (I think it is called) max bones, no of which were linked up. I put that option aside. Are you saying that the D|S Collada export ends up giving you a BiPed rig on import into Max? (I'm not assuming a 'perfect' or no-tweak needed biped in any case.)

No, no, I was saying have your friend re-rig the collada exported mesh with a biped. That way you should be able to use all the morphs without manual import and export of them.
Or in other words, do the collada import with everything that it will bring over. (Rigging, mesh, morphs and textures). Then dump the rigging, and have him rig it with a biped. You still get to keep the morphs and textures. With a reasonable amount of teaking. I'm assuming you;ve already acepted the fact that just about every step of this process is going to include some twaeking and experimenting, so I'm figuring tweaking will go without saying.

Quote - Second, the transfer of morphs will indeed be judicious. I am hoping to do my shaping in PoserPro for different characters, including male, so no shaping morphs need go over. After that, expression morphs you'd be suprised how few I use! Visemes, brow, eye squint, etc. Point well taken about the morph target burden, however. Thanks.

What I did is created a master export with everything in it, and saved it as a max file. Then when I start on a specific task, I start with my master, and delete parts I won't be using. It goes reasonably well.

I don't know about the timing of your project(s), if this is ongoing, I'd keep an eye on Daz Studio developments. Coming back from Siggraph, I'm seeing them more and more rubbing shoulders with the high enders, and making connections in that direction, while Poser seems to be lagging behind.

Ok, that makes more sense. I get your workflow suggestion now. We will try it tomorrow or over the weekend.

I'm perfectly will for Daz to step up to bat with 'whatever' tools they put on the table. If they are trying to play with the big boys, V4 alive and well inside those apps has to be on people's minds.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - Ok, that makes more sense. I get your workflow suggestion now. We will try it tomorrow or over the weekend.

I'm perfectly will for Daz to step up to bat with 'whatever' tools they put on the table. If they are trying to play with the big boys, V4 alive and well inside those apps has to be on people's minds.

::::: Opera :::::

I've also seen Mental Ray like rendering and nonlionear animation tools inside DazStudio, over at siggraph.  I have to say, my jaw was dropping, because I didn't realize just how much D|S has grown while I've been neglecting it.

Wow. Ok, I'm ready for that....but hey Mr. Farr what about the HAIR!

AFAIK, the cloth simulation is under 'coming soon' tag. It seems to me that Hair and cloth make appearances not too far from one another. I know users over on DAZ commons pester them about it all the time.

Also, if you are willing to hire some serious help, rather then paying hefty moiney for a rigger, you may want to explore an option of someone writing you a Studio<>Max type bridge plugin with their developers kit:
http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/software/studio/-/developer?&_m=d

I'd have to ask a serious programmer type to translate in plain english what all this object oriented, SDK and integration means... but if I were you I'd be very curious to see how it may help me... and of I (or the programmer) could not sell it as a plugin later on.

The impression I got from those guys as siggraph was that they're dying to have more people write plugins for DS anyway.

You may even be able to find a college student whom would be willing to work on it as a school programming assignment or something similar. I've hired people in the past to write me plugins for my engineering software, from Max to Rhino, to CAD. So far it's turned out great every time.

Its sounding like D|S is worth another look. I haven't used it since it first came out.