Which one is better for 3D Studio Max import? Pros & Cons please.

The Pro Pack is an amazing tool for Poser and I am extremely glad I got it, but for 3D Studio Max stuff, I am a fan of Maximum Pose. The major advantage it has over the pro pack is that you don't need to have poser on the same machine as max to use it. Once you've exported your animation and converted it you can take it to any computer with Max and it comes in perfectly. Also it is very stable in Max, and it can optimize your animation getting rid uf unneeded keyframes. I crashed several times when I used the Pro Pack Plugin with Max, and I found it ran a little slower in max. One other major plus is that Konan (the creator of Maximum Pose) is very reliable in dealing with any technical problems you may have - he is promt with his replies and has never failed to help me. It can take a little longer for the folks at CL to get back to you as they are responsible for several software packages and have a larger client base (not that they haven't done a great job). The cons of it (when compared with the pro pack) are that you need to have lots of temporary hard drive space while you are making the conversion from Poser to Max. How much space is determined by how long and how many figures are in your animation. Once the conversion is done, you can erase almost everything you generated, and once you save your max file you can completely erase everything. Poser Pro Pack doesn't require any additional space, and changes you make to your PZ3 are immediately available in Max - in Maximum Pose you have to go through the process of re-exporting and converting aganin. Another Con is that it takes a little time to make the conversion - depending on how fast your processor is, it could be a little or a lot. PPP doesn't take any time to go from one to the other. Another con might be that the program is what it is (a poser to Max program), while the pro pack features several other things not related to max - this includes multiple viewports, character creation tools...etc. It makes the Poser Experience more like other 3D apps, and gives it way more functionality. Again, if you are only looking for a Poser to Max solution, I'd say maximum pose. Even if you aren't doing an animation and just want a perfectly set up poser object in Max, this is still your best bet. On the other hand, if you want more than just a poser to max tool, then the Pro pack is the way to go - Like I said, for this one thing, I preffer to use Maximum Pose. Check out my Demo Reel at www.allbetsareoff.com and you can see some of the poser animations I've done in Max using Konan's software. Aharon

Can I use the output from both programs in Max and add effects from plugins like Clothreyes, Simcloth, Shaghair etc?

It depends on how your plugins work, and how you want to use them. Clothreys works with 2 exceptions - You can't turn part of you poser import (like a dress) into a cloth object - the imported object isn't seperable in that way. Also, while you can attach a cloth object to an imported poser object (like a cape, or long streamer on the hand), since the poser figure is actually morphing as opposed to moving, it won't alway stay where it is supposed to since the vertices are shifting and not moving. The solution is to use a dummy object that you move with the poser figure (you'll have to keyframe and arrange on your own) and then make it invisable after you are done with clothreys' calculations. Other than that, the poser figure and the cloth reyes objects should interact correctly, but since the poser objects are complex it could take a while to process. The major problem with a plugin like this and poser figures are that even if you were turning the clothes into cloth objects, the clothes are usually tight and either the poser figure intesects the cloth item (causing huge slowdowns in processing time) or the poser body part needs to be made invisable so it doesn't poke through. The result is that the clothes wont have body parts to collide with - and therefore no collision detection to make the plugin work correctly. I haven't used shag hair, but if it is applied to a material as oppsoed to object then with Maximum pose you shouldn't have a problem since it has easily editable materials in Max. If the effect is applied to an object, since the poser figure is one solid object, you can't seperate out parts, and then It won't work unless you want to make the enire figure hairy. There is a solution that comes to mind though - export your animation as several parts - seperating the hair from the rest of it (one animation of just the hair, and one of everything else). Once you bring them into 3DSMax it should line up perfectly (though you may end up having to not optimize keyframes so that it is exact). I genuinely do not know if any of this is the case with Pro Pack, but I assume that for the most part it is. You should contact Curious Labs and see what they know. Aharon

There are pluses and minuses to both. MaxPose is more stable than the plugin, but it is much slower if youre doing long animations. If you are exporting a 8 sec animation from Poser (240 frames), it can take up to 15 minutes just to export the obj files. Then add about 5 minutes for maxpose to covert the files. And it produces huge maxfiles (120mb+). If you make a mistake you have to start over from the beginning (another 20 minutes). Also it uses morph targets to do the animation which can limit what you can do in max (I dont think any of the plugins you mentioned will work-not sure though). Because the files are so large, it takes 5-10 minutes to submit a network job. The good thing about it is it works every time. If its user interface and speed were improved, it would be great. The plugin is much faster as far as getting your animation into max, and its easier to make changes. But, its buggy. I always have to start with a new scene to get it work, and it causes crashes at times. So, pick your poison. Im not completely happy with either one.

I have used both and to be honest since the Pro Pack I don't use MP anymore. It's a good product, and Konan is a good guy but I simply haven't found any advantage. The morphing trick MP uses to get animations in is a cool idea - but I much prefer the pro-packs native handling of the Poser objects instead of all the morph calculations.