I was just thinking about how to make a good looking environment for my figures. I have tested out the envirosphere and such....but I was just thinking it would be better to make my own landscapes and such. That way I don't have to worry about finding the right image that may or may not exist. So, what would you recommend for that? I have been thinking of Vue or Bryce. Do either of them have the ability to import into poser? Or is it only from poser to them?

As backgrounds, exporting from Vue or Bryce as jpg's would work just fine.  If you are thinking along the lines of prop landscape, then I would recommend either Terradome or Terradome 2 over at RDNA.  Those add-on features can create rather incredible landscape and terrain.

Vue terrain can be exported as an .obj and can be imported into Poser. Texturing then becomes the issue. A single image works, but variation would need to be painted.

My current feelings on this are that until Poser gets instancing there is little point in doing large outdoor scenes. I have never had good results from Terradome compared to Vue or Carrara, although that may just reflect a lack of skill on my part.

It's a bit of a race for me... if Poser gets instancing I'd dump Carrara (Carrara is easier to get Poser characters into and they preserve their functionality), but if Carrara got a morph brush like in Poser, AND dynamic cloth, I'd be happy to keep going with Carrara.I'd then consider investing in Octane so the renders from Poser and Carrara would look the same. ATM they don't quite.

You can't get a Carrara scene into Poser.

Oh, final thing... I haven't tried it, but Carrara can supposedly output to HDRI, so any Carrara scene could be used as an HDR map on the envirosphere as long as you set up the render that way. Something else I've considered as it would let me have image maps for different times of day.

The other option is to import you scene into Vue that way you can let Vue look after the landscape and you can select for all your Poser stuff to be rendered using the Poser materials that way texturing is not an issue.  The downside is that this does take a lot lot memory and large scenes may not be practical.  If it is a couple of figures then the upside is that the figures become part of the landscape not just placed in front of a backdrop.

 For example, 

I'll have to look at that. I've always liked the look of Vue scenes. Carrara does let you link the Poser runtime though, making importing and posing easier, but you don't have the option of using Poser materials. So close...