I was wondering about Poser and 3DGS. I have the demo and I saw that there are export options in formats that MED can open and I was thinking about eventually buying it, but first I want to know if it would even work with gamestudio.

Several questions:

1. After creating the humanoid, adding clothes and hair, bones and animations, can I get all of this into MED (and eventually WED) without a problem?

2. I know the models in Poser are extremely high poly, can the models be reliably reduced without losing too much quality?

3. If Poser isn't a good option, is there an available alternative for the same price or cheaper?

I've always had a difficult time with modeling humanoids, which is why I'm interested in the program.

Export single body-parts from poser to .3ds or .obj and open in MeshLab (open source)!
2. Can the models be reliably reduced without losing too much quality? Yes, inside the MeshLab tool. This tool can load and export .obj and .3ds files.
Replace body parts in poser with the new poly-reduced body parts. The border points, are not more merged( test rotation twist bend ) if the animation of an part not perfect set the option bend off for this part. Do not import fingers! import a low poly hand! Export the frames to 3ds and open MED, import all ani-
frames and create polygons between the body parts to close the mesh.
(sorry for my germanish, I hope you can read this )

bone animation in poser to A7: there is an other way : trueSpace 7.6 is just freeware
export BHV from poser
import BHV to the reduced Bone-Model in Truespace. and read the trueSpace help files

It is not worth the effort to get poser models into 3dgs becouse it is illegal. Poser models can only be used for rendering art work and cannot be distributed in a game environment. Models have copyright just like everything else. I suppose it may be possible to get a game license for some of those models but it would be thousands of dollars. You could go through all the effort of converting a model for a personal project and probably nobody would notice but that is a lot of work for something that you cannot distribute!
There is no similar program that will work, they all have the same restrictions.
You might be able to use Poser to work on models you have created and then import into 3dgs, I have never tried it.
Really the only way to get models into a game is to build them yourself with Blender, Truespace etc, or buy them from freelancers or 3D shops.

Oh its illegal? I guess I misunderstood the license, i thought it was only illegal for commercial products.

I guess I'll save my money and try to learn it the hard way then.

And is there anywhere I can find a tutorial on humanoid modeling?

The Joan of Arc tutorial by Michel Roger is still one of the best human modeling tutorials around.

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp

Mmh, there would be MakeHuman when you don't want to learn i the hard way. A human mesh maker. But the MH Mesh is, like the Poser Mesh, a bit too big for game content. On the other hand, the MH mesh is not this restricted than the Poser mesh ...

http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php

"Oh its illegal? I guess I misunderstood the license, i thought it was only illegal for commercial products."

The actual restriction is that you cannot distribute the base model, so even if you just make a game and give it to your friends technically that would be illegal. Of course the Poser people probably won't find out but is it worth the hassle? And of course there is always the argument that if you drastically change the base model is it something different that is not restricted?

the poser pro, have 2 new models (low and high polygons) can be legal distribute.

I have the poserpro, and the posibilities, are by sample; face room you take your face photo and put in your model, the cloth room, the walk tool, easy to use ...

Poser nailed some Oblivion modders trying to convert on of thier models for a mod. They ended up being tar and feathered by the community.

Poser is great for a game intro or even possible windowed talking characters as was done in Wizardry 8 but actually using the models as in game characters has always been illegal.