Curious Labs describes Poser as:

"Poser 5 is the ultimate 3D-character design and animation tool for artists and animators. Create 3D Figures using a diverse collection of ready-to-use 3D human and animal models. Poser's innovative interface makes figure design, posing and animating fast and easy. Map facial photos, grow and style dynamic hair, and create dynamic cloth to add extraordinary realism to your figure."

Discreet describes 3d studio max as:

"The world's most popular animation modeling, and rendering solution for film, television, games and design visualization. 3ds max contains the essential high-productivity tools required for creating eye-catching film and television animation, cutting-edge games, and distinct design visualizations"

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Wouldn't it be nice to gain all the benefits of Poser and use them directly in the 3d studio max environment? Gesture Max allows artists and animators who work in 3ds max to use Poser as their character creation environment, and then simply transfer the characters to 3ds max to be integrated with their existing workflow.

Gesture Max is a plugin for 3d studio max that reads Poser (.pz3) files directly, and imports the character into 3ds max. Unlike other programs, plugins and utilities that import Poser models, Gesture Max moves the complete model into max, including the morph channels. This means that it is no longer necessary to return to Poser each time the character must be repositioned or animated. All Actors, Figures and Props (to use Poser terminology), along with the textures and morphs are effectively moved from the Poser environment to the 3ds max environment. In addition, the user has the option to rig the Figure, using native max bones, or Character Studio biped, and to skin the Figure using the skin modifier, or Character Studio Physique. The new 3ds max characters are ready to added to the pipeline for animation and rendering.

• Import and rigging of Poser 4 and 5 files (Must have Poser installed on same machine)
• Can choose between max bones or character studio biped as skeleton
• Can choose between Skin or Physique for skinning you're character
• When using max bones, you can select to have a rig built around the character for easier animation
• Imports and sets up morph targets from the poser character
• Customizable rig setup
• Import lists enable you to import all or part of a poser model