There are a number of ways to get Poser 7 content into CINEMA 4D. I'll cover some of them in this section.

Exporting from Poser 7

First up, you can just export the Poser mesh in a number of formats that C4D recognizes. e.g. 3ds or obj. In CINEMA 4D you just open these files as though they were regular CINEMA 4D files. This works but you don't get the materials imported properly. The 3ds format comes in triangulated whereas the obj format comes in as 4 sided polygons if they were 4 sided to begin with in Poser 7. The imported mesh is very small but you can easily adjust the scaling of imported meshes in the preferences. The free Riptide plugin imports obj files better than the built in obj importer. The advantage with this is that all also imports mtl files (texture information files that go with obj mesh files). CINEMA 4D may also report missing textures so you can either copy the associated texture maps that go with the character into the same folder as the C4D file or better still set up a path to the Poser textures in the texture paths options in the preferences in C4D. Hair depending on what sort you used in Poser 7 will be imported as a mesh or not at all. Let's have a look what at an imported mesh using the Riptide plugin looks like rendered in CINEMA 4D.

Jesse figure imported into C4D using the free Riptide Plugin

This is the Jesse Hi Res character and the exported obj file is 19.8mb in size. I added a couple of lights. When you export from Poser you have to deselect the ground plane in the list of objects to export. As you can see the result of importing a still image is pretty good. However you're restricted to stills and having to copy texture maps from various places can be messy. There are several commercial plugins that allow you to bring in animations and content from Poser 7 to CINEMA 4D. They are:

PoserFusion for CINEMA 4D at US $179   This supports CINEMA 4D 9.6 to 10.5 32 bit

interPoser Pro  This supports CINEMA 4D 9.1 to 10.5 32 bit and 64bit (some limitations with 64 bit version) at US $150

The advantage of these plugins is they work with Poser's native files and support animation. But note not all Poser 7 features like dynamic hair and dynamic cloth are supported. Better to use CINEMA 4D hair and cloth anyway. I managed to wangle a copy of interPoser Pro so I'll give you a brief run down about it next.

interPoser Pro

The interPoser Pro plugin is developed by CINEMA 4D user and developer Robert Templeton, better know around C4D forums as Kuroyume. Robert kindly provided me with a copy of interPoser Pro after I explained that I was working on a review of Poser 7 and with particular emphasis on using Poser with C4D.

The plugin comes as a 10.7mb zipped download. Installing the plugin is just a matter of unzipping and placing the files in your plugins folder. Included in the zip is a 93 page pdf manual. As I was writing this section of the review Robert updated the plugins about 4 times and you get an email telling you what's been fixed or upgraded. By the time this section of the review was finished the plugin was up to version 1.74. After installing the plugin you'll be prompted for a serial number when you fire up C4D. This comes with the email along with the zip file.

The very cool thing about interPoser Pro is that you don't actually need Poser. You can load Poser files / content and edit / pose the characters in a similar manner to actually having Poser on your system. Since there's a ton of free or low cost Poser content available, for some people just using interPoser Pro could be all that you need. You then have the advantage of CINEMA 4D's superior rendering plus it's much better stability. To start using interPoser Pro you first have to locate some Poser runtime files. When you download Poser Content it usually comes in a directory structure with the parent directory / folder named Runtime. Just navigate to where you have these stored on your computer and save the interPoser preferences. You can have multiple Runtimes. It's fairly similar to using the C4D Content Browser to manage your scene assets. Here's what the interPoser Pro Runtime explorer looks like. Clicking on the thumbnail adds the content to your scene in C4D.

interPoser Pro explorer

interPoser Pro can also open Poser 7 pz3 and pzz files. Posing with interPoser pro is much the same as in Poser. Body parts have a range of sliders that take the place of dials or you can select and apply poses in the Runtime explorer. Clothes and props can be made to conform to your figures just like in Poser, so that when you pose and or animate them, the clothes and props move with the figure. I had a lot of fun applying BVH motion captured files to Poser figures directly in CINEMA 4D using the BVH import function of the interPoser Pro plugin. Just a few mouses clicks and you've got your character animated. Here's a little animation using a BVH file from the Cold Milk selection available to purchase from Trubones.com. The bvh file doesn't pose the hands so I had to apply a fist pose with interPoser Pro to each hand.

iPP Tool

Just as Poser 7 has tools for manipulating your figures so to does interPoser Pro. They work pretty much the same as the Poser equivalents. Here is a screen grab where I am posing the arm using the rotate tool. (When posing your figures in C4D you use the interPoser pro tools not the C4D tools).

iPP Tool

Importing animations

The way to import Poser animations into CINEMA 4D is to save your Poser scene and just open it with interPoser Pro. Prior to saving your scene in Poser 7 it's critical that you disable IK if the figure has IK enabled. If you don't, things get all twisted up when you load the scene in CINEMA 4D. Let's have a look at a simple run cycle animation that I made in Poser 7 and loaded into CINEMA 4D.

I have say, this is mighty impressive. Creating a walk / run cycle in Poser 7 is dead easy. Bringing the animated figure into CINEMA 4D with the interPoser Pro plugin is even easier. Creating this animation in Poser 7, and then loading it in CINEMA 4D only took me a couple of minutes to do.

Conclusion - interPoser Pro

I have hardly done the interPoser Pro plugin justice in the couple of paragraphs that I have written here. It's a major plugin and I could have written a review just for it just on it's own. It's fast and easy to use. As mentioned you don't actually have to own or use Poser to use the plugin. It's just a matter of linking up Poser runtime libraries with the Runtime browser and you're up and away. I highly recommend this plugin.