The Poser Modeller's Toolkit

For all those who wish to start making things for Poser here's a basic rundown of the essential applications that they will need.

1. A good 3d modelling package.

Freeware.

Anim8tor.
Very easy package to use but can be difficult in point edit mode.
Blender.
Extremely good but overly complex. Very steep learning curve.
Gmax.
Basically a cut down version of 3DStudio Max (the render engine has been removed). People either love it or hate it, depending on how they view Max.
Wings3D.
Not very intuitive and can cause unintentional grouping problems. Doesn't export obj files totally correctly.

Professional packages.

3DMax.
The industry standard. Trouble is it is expensive, somewhat unstable and has a steep learning curve.
Lightwave.
Again an expensive package. Stable but overly complex.
Maya.
The high end standard. A brilliant package but you need a mortgage to buy this one!
TrueSpace.
An affordable high end package! All versions of TS, from v2.0 are usable for making Poser stuff although it gets easier from v4.0 onwards.

2. A good way of mapping/texturing the model.

UV Mapper Pro (or UV Mapper).
Not only the best way of mapping your model, this app' also corrects errors in the obj file and allows you to get around some of the Poser induced rendering problems that can ruin an otherwise brilliant model. This program (Pro version only) also allows you to be able to texture your models very accurately. You can be drawing the texture in PSP or Photoshop and checking how it looks on the model (in UV Mapper Pro) at the same time. You can also use this app to create the groups in your models, it's much better than the Poser grouping tool (it allows you to create both geometric groups and material groups and assign individual facets/vertexes to these groups).

PaintShopPro or Photoshop.
Both these programs are excellent at creating the textures needed for your model. Personally I tend to use PSP since its drawing tools are marginally superior to the tools in PS although the layer tools in PS are slightly more powerfull than the layer tools in PSP.

3. A package to assist in creating a usable hierarchy for complex Poser models and figures.

Phi Builder.
This program offers a far more accurate and efficient way of creating the hierarchy needed by Poser when creating .cr2 files.

4. A method of hand editing the following file types within Poser..... .cr2 .pp2 .hr2 .pz2(MAT poses).

Notepad.
Can be used but it isn't very good. Typically MicroSoft, it's bugged to the hilt and won't accept files above a certain size!

Araneae.
Although this text editor was designed primarily as a tool for programming webserver apps it performs flawlessly when asked to handle any of the Poser files. I would reccomend this to anyone who is serious about Poser.

5. A way of packaging and compressing the files for distribution.

Winzip.
What more can I say.

My own toolkit comprises the following.

TrueSpace 5.2
UV Mapper Pro
PaintShopPro 7
Phi Builder
Araneae
WinZip 8