I've been using Poser for awhile now and have noticed all the buzz about importing Poser figures into 3DMax or Lightwave or Cinema4 or Carrera, etc... My question is why? What's the major advantage(s) to importing my Poser figures and animations into another (more expensive) program? Just wondering.

Mainly because the rendering engine in Poser is very limited.

Better renders. Better lighting. (I hate Poser lighting personally.) Easier to do props as you don't have to import it into Poser, you can keep it in Max of Lightwave. You can do landscapes in the native program and not worry about exports. You can do some neat things with textures for clothing for patterns that don't get strange at the seams. I export into Bryce or Vue myself, but there's a few annoyances to work around.

I'm no expert myself, but I believe one reason it's a big deal is because the rendering engines in those other applications are more complex and and allow for more realistic renders with features like volumetrics and caustics. I could define those terms if you held a gun to my head, but someone else could probably do it better and faster than I. Also, the more advanced programs have features that Poser does not. For example, LW can host plug-ins that generate hair and fur that are far more realistic than what you get with a plain Poser model (even after Kozaburo et al. discovered transmapped hair). Another example would be the ability to animate textures, though I think that the Poser ProPack does this itself also (and I think it also does motion blur, which these other programs generally also do). Another example would be that the advanced programs can animate "particles" to simulate clouds, fog, smoke, etc. which Poser does not do (at least, not well). Oh, and reflections, too! Of course, with these last examples, people could get a program like Carrara or Bryce, which are cheaper than 3DSMAX or LW...but you still would need to be able to get your Poser models and/or animation into those programs as well. But maybe the best answer is to search the galleries here for works produced by Poser plus one of these other programs...the ol' "picture is worth a thousand words" bit. Search with keywords like radiosity, or caustics, and I would think you could turn up some interesting results.