I've been thinking about getting one of these programs but was wondering what your general composing techniques are. Do you usually generate characters in Poser then import into Bryce/Vue to finish or do the scene in Bryce/Vue first then set up your characters in Poser to import? Or would it depend on the complexity of the scene and/or pose? Any other composing techniques that I should be aware of other than the ever-popular importing textures/transparencies form Poser.

Well, I usually do most of my work in Vue, I get the character if there is one, or prop, position it the way I can imagine then start in Vue, if the prop or character needs more work I go back to Poser, then back to Vue....kind of back and forth for a little while, then the rest in Vue...Sharen

Vue won't export objects, and I think the same is true of Bryce, so if you wanted to do a final render in Poser you would have to export a rendered image of your Vue/Bryce scene and paste it into the background in Poser or composite the V/B and Poser renders in a bitmap application (Vue will export a depth channel for your render, which would help with masking).

I do it both ways on occasion, depending on the scene. I use the Bryce bmp on either a square prop, or nerds backdrop (runtime dna's infinity cove would be the same, and free). If this doen's work I export the characters as obj and then put them into the scene in bryce.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Curious Labs has announced that they are helping to make Vue able to import animations from Poser 4. I believe that right now it only imports static scenes. Brian

I generally do my initial composition in Poser and then import the .pz3 into Vue. After that, it is like Sharen stated, back and forth for awhile till I'm satisfied. By the way, Bryce is totally unable to import native Poser .pz3 files. That is one major advantage of Vue over Bryce. Two other advantages of Vue over Bryce is: 1.) It appears that Curious Labs is working closely with e-on to make the two programs work better together. 2.) Perhaps the biggest advantage of Vue over Bryce is with Vue, you never, ever, absolutely never have to travel to that Hell called Corel Customer Support. I used both Bryce and Vue up until the release of Bryce 5. When Corel did not seemed at all concerned that my upgrade to version 5 was not recognizing my version 4 serial number and, instead, decided to put me on hold for 30 minutes on a long-distance call at my expense two separate times, we parted ways. I still use Bryce 4 at times, though it has been awhile. But anything that requires Poser integration is now planned from the start as a Poser-Vue project. Much smoother, much faster. Take care and be well. casamerica

The fact that Bryce doesn't recognise .pz3 is regrettable, but I prefer to texture everything in Bryce anyway. The materials editor is very nice to use once you get the hang of it. I'm still using Bryce 4 so I haven't had casamerica's problems. To my mind the choice between Bryce and Vue is largely down to the sort of pictures you are interested in. If primarily landscapes, go for Vue. If primarily interiors, Bryce is much better. If you have either Bryce or Vue, there is absolutely no point in trying to use the Poser render engine for anything other than quick-see looks at the figures.