Okay, I've gotten really pretty decent at modeling in 3DSMax, and I have the plug-in to output directly to OBJ format even. Oh, there are a few shapes that are driving me crazy trying to get to work right, granted. I have a particular sword-blade with an inset gem and a weird shape that just won't seem to work, and I've been on-and-off frustrating myself trying to make an arched chamber room (not arched pillars, just an arched ceiling -- it's harder than it should be -- I can get the shape, but I cannot get it 'cut out' of anything without the boolean going all to cracksmoker levels). I'm sure I'll give up my stubbornness and ask about them in the 3DSMax forum here or at 3dcommune. But I've tried and tried following all the tutorials and I cannot seem to make a character work for shit. JPs drive me up a wall, things always look screwed up, IK just won't work at all, and so on. I just can't seem to 'get' it. Soo... I was thinking -- if there is a person out there who has no problems making figures and conforming figures, I'd be perfectly willing to work with them and make meshes that they could then finish into characters/clothing in Poser. You've seen my stuff in the free stuff on here. I have a lot of ideas and designs in mind, but I haven't bothered startign them as I wouldn't be able to turn them into pose-ables.

In all immodesty I'd suggest a quick look at http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=347959 and http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=348598 The info is in the Amapi Forum, but the process is pure Poser.

Well, okay, but I've tried a zillion tutorials and it just doesn't seem to work for me. BTW, as far as text editing -- I recommend gvim (www.vim.org) as the best thing to edit stuff like this in. Beats out wordpad by a million miles. Gvim is one of the two standard UNIX programmers choices (eMacs being the other), but it's avilable for Windows too. And you can change your filetype before saving, so that it exports your carriage returns as n instead of rn, thus making it instantly mac compatible.

what you might want to do, is find some kind soul who'll pose one of your pieces for you. Then you can take the sucker apart and find out how they did it. Try down in the topic forum 'character creators'. good luck!

I'd gladly volunteer, but I still don't have the hang of joint parameters, spherical falloff zones, IK, etc. Although I hope to have it all figured out by the turn of the century. I love those lightsabers, by the way! I've just made Yoda Mimic-ready, and might set him loose against Darth Jar and Darth-Darth Binks later this week.