Poser 7

Does anyone know if Poser 7 is something that would be valuable in Second Life? Would the images created in Poser be downloadable to Second Life? I make animals, and am always looking for something to assist in the construction of the animals.

Poser can be used to make animations I believe. However for building thing out of world check out the stickies on the building forum.

Poser is nice for simple animations and static poses. It is possible to upload .bvh files up to 10 seconds long. You must start with the SL figure (download thru knowledge base) rather than the poser figures and I dont think the animals in Poser are usable at all. Some features such as facial expressions and finger positions do not translate to SL. It's a complicated process, and I get the impression that the best animations in SL are done using those expensive motion capture devices.

Thanks Bubba...thats the sort of info I needed. I was about to shell out the cash for this, but if its only suitable for animating our avatars, I can get that a lot less expensive elsewhere.

Any idea on what 3D modeling programs would work nicely in SL? I have Blender, but without a manual, its Greek to me.

Blender, Wings 3d, PloppSL, most major 3d modelling programs are compatible with a plugin, rokuro and that other one..

Seriously, the sculpty tools sticky in the building forum is the best place for this info (And the wiki page on the first post in that sticky as well)

For what works with SL, you're just as well of with DAZ|Studio instead of Poser. (www.daz3d.com) DAZ|Studio is ***free***, and can do the same type of 3D Rendering and BVH animation exports that Poser does.

Programs like DAZ|Studio or Poser can also be quite useful in creating advanced textures for building, with baked-in 3D lighting effects. I use DAZ|Studio to make the initial 3D rendered art that I use for a lot of my textures that I sell at TRU, and then take the rendered output from DAZ into Photoshop for fine-tuning.

Ceera, you sure about that link? I tried it and don't seem to be at a software location.

Try this one [http://www.daz3d.com/]

Yeah! That one works! Thanks.

My bad. Had a typo of a 2 instead of a 3 in that URL. Fixed now.

No worries, Ceera. I got it now, and I appreciate the tip.

Looks very cool, I know what i'm doing tonite