Are there sites that explain how these two softwares interact, apart Curious Lab's? I'm interested in particular in the creation of models in Lightwave and the set up of those models as Poser friendly ones. I don't own these programs yet, but I would like to know if it would be worth buying Poser Pro Pack. If I create a character in Lightwave and make it posable in that program, do I have to repeat this passage in Poser or I can export my character as a posable one? Thanks

I am a newby with most of my experience in Poser 4+ProPack, but I just got LW6.5b and my intent is to move Poser figures with animation into LW, which is what the ProPack plugin does. It hosts Poser within LW. I think there are ways to make figures in LW for Poser, but I have not studied this. I assume you make them as objects and then import them There are similar tutorials about Cinema 4D (ProPack recently added a Cinema 4D plugin) and other 3D programs that can make figure components or morphs for Poser. I am primarily one who buys figures from others and plan to concentrate on storyboard, scene creation, animation and final production of components in Final Cut Pro. So ProPack does not seem to be the specific solution, but ProPack does have some other enhancements with the setup room that does bones, etc so figures you import can have the same geometry of the skeletons as is standard in Poser. However, that may or may not be handled better in LW, depending which package you are planning to finalize for images in. LW should be by far the better package to do any final rendering in, whereas Poser has a vast library of premade figures and textures for low cost or free. So I have always operated under the approach the Poser is a source of organic models, with or withoug animation, that are ported into a "higer end" (LW, MAX, Cinema4D,etc) or "environmental" package (Bryce..Natural Pose for $99 will import Poser figures, VuedeSprit...which has a good Poser import utility, but only for stills) to finalize the render. Now since LW7b has the enhanced Motion Mixer, there seems to be even more reason to create any final complex animations in LW. I also got LifeForms 3.9 for more motion files and to enhance Poser animations. It can work with LW and would allow skeleton addition/alteration for several programs including Poser and LW. Here is their link http://www.cvision.co.uk/index.htm Sorry I can not be of more help, but good luck...both of these programs offer so much, including real learning curves. Tutorials are available on-line for Poser. I found the CD ROM on Poser3 and Poser4 by VTC very helpful with almost 8 hrs of Quicktime movies (published in UK but available at Publishing Perfection on line at a better price). At the VTC web site you can actually pull up about one third to one forth of most of their CDs Quicktime movies which are always the introductory chapters. I have found this a great asset is deciding if I even wanted a particular 2D or 3D package, since they discuss the strengths and weakness of most and you see interfaces and overall functions. I only wish they had one for LW. They seem to have about 60+ programs covered. LightWave has several video tape sets, several I am using now are fine. I have accumulated multiple books, but I find it much harder to make progress in books in the early stages of learning. The Poser 4 manual is fairly good as is the Poser 4 Pro Pack f/x design book...which is about the only one available.

Thank you very much! I think I'll need to upgrade to Pro Pack when I will purchase LW just because I have a lot of pre made models and because of the set up room. Just a clarification: when you import a poser figure in LW, say DAZ's Michael, can you import his joint set up and morphs? Thanks

Again I am early in this process, but reading the tutorial from Poser 4 ProPack f/x & design, it seems clear that you should set up your figure in Poser, create its animation then you import into LW (works in 5.6 yo 6.5, may not be functional in 7). Then you "host" this poser figure + its animation in LW. You do have access to the textures of the Poser figure via the LW Surface editor. So it seems that all of the morphs and joint set up enter LW but I am not sure how much you can additionally manipulate them. However, I have been asking about the best way to do this in a variety of discussion groups (looking at Messiah, Animation Master, LifeForms 3.9, LW7 updates, etc) and one artist told me he had experience with many of these packages and he was using LifeForms to broaden his animation abilities and Poser for characters and with LW new animation enhancements it was not worth it to get Messiah and Animation Master did not integrate well at all. So I am planning to us these 3 products (I bought Credo's MeGA Mocap CDs on sale so with Lifeforms there are about 1000 motion files...at their site you can review and purchase/download individual file sets for about 50 cents per file but you have to get a small set as I remember maybe 5-10 files). I have seen that there is one issue with LifeForms and Poser motion files...most do not animate the hands. So be aware that separate work will be needed in such detailed movements. Hope this helps. I am "feeling my way throught this" as well. An aside...I am using instrumental music for most of my work that comes from my sons work at mp3 (www.mp3.com/patrickglant) which is a spectrum of film music, hiphop, r&b...somewhat cross genre material that appeals to a broad spectrum of listeners. We rotate the ability to download songs and are looking to license work. Check it out if you like...I have storyboarded "Sleeping Under Stars", "If Looks Could Save" and have concepts for "Anticipating Love" and "Ambient Anxiety". Good Luck

Thanks again!