Just wondering. I'm really tunred off by Poser's. Do'nt get me wrong I love the feel of Poser, it's just too bad MC gave up Poser and Carrara, before thier base technologies became intercompatable. Bryce render photorealistically. I've done too much with Carrara, but in my taste I like Bryce alot. Having this three applications makes the bigger engines seem so sureal, It'll be a shame if none read each other at all. We're lucky to have base models to share, but why not motion paths? I realise BVHs work in Max, and Lifeforms, but where alse is there that compatability? = )

Vue 4 works well with Poser and with their new Mover program it can run Poser animations in Vue. Vue 4 reads Poser PZ3 files by using, borrowing Poser's engine. It renders as well if not better then Bryce. Or you might want to wait till Poser 5 comes out. It is going to have a much better render engine then Poser 4. So we are told. It's supposed to be out by the end of the summer.

Max, Lightwave and Cinema 4D can import pz3 files with the ProPack plugins. This works for animations too.

There are two utilities that allow you to import poser anims into bryce and max : maximum pose and natural pose. You can try exporting obj (wavefront) files and load them into bryce too.

Attached Link: http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/

Poseray will export pz3 files to the excellent POVRay (free) renderer.

How does POVRay compare to Bryce? Well this is all very nice to know. My next thought is that a working knowledge of these application becomes imminent, is this true, or can even a scene's lighting be transfered, and then just used through a specific engine? Each engine will render the scene somewhat differently, I'd imagine, Has anybody had much experience mixing results? = )

Attached Link: http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/1998-12-31/strike.jpg

Here is a link to a POVRay rendered image. You can find more at povray.org. It is certainly capable of 1st class renders. Poseray will read lights and cameras from the pz3 file. You can also add more lights. Be aware that you do have to also export your Poser figers as obj files in addition to having the pz3 but the process is easy enough. Yes, to get the full effect of POVRay, you will have to learn how to use it (which I haven't), but that is the case with any application. I've seen some beautiful Vue renders and I imagine it would be easier to learn than POVRay - plus you have landscape creation. I've never used Bryce - nice renders but I hear it is quite slow.

If you can get hold of a copy of BMRT (Exluna pulled it from the website after the nVidia deal), you'll have a free production-quality Raytracing+Radiosity Renderer that can be used with Poser without any extra software (Poser has .rib export since Version 1).

If you want to see povray in action, I've got some povray renders of poser scenes in my gallery : the pics named "power ball 2", "german" and "huuuge". I've also two other povray scenes : "trees" is a pure povray scene and "cartoon" uses another modeler. You can compare "german" and "german 2", #2 was rendered with cinema4d. Problem with povray and poseray is that poseray messes a little with some textures, it's not so easy to obtain a correct export of all the texs in one step. But if you are patient enough, it can be worth it :))