Regarding speed, I did a test a while back with 8 Poser figures, each being resized via vertex deformation. The results were pretty good for the lower-complexity ones:
Regarding Poser models not being distributable in games, I have Poser 4 (from MetaCreations, pre-Curious Labs) and have never seen anything in its docs about that restriction. I can understand why they'd be touchy about giving out their original models, but mine will be modified from the originals, converted into a different format, and Moleboxed.
As for getting animated Poser models into a game, I've just ordered a Carrara 4 Pro upgrade that's supposed to be able to import Poser figures and animations. Carrara uses bones, so I'll be interested to see how well it integrates the Poser stuff and how well that can be exported in standard formats.
1.4 GHz Athlon, GeForce3 Ti200: Debug on Debug off Triangles ea. P3 5 FPS 11 FPS 28,820 P2 7 FPS 16 FPS 17,538 P4Lo 29 FPS 69 FPS 4,410 P2Lo 33 FPS 74 FPS 4,170 P1 39 FPS 85 FPS 3,436 Of the low-poly ones, P2Lo looks the best. The overall shape of P4Lo is perhaps better, but it seems to have less visible detail. To get a feel for total polygons for all 8 figures in the scene: Name Tot. Polys FPS P2 140,304 16 P4Lo 35,280 69 P1 27,488 85
Regarding Poser models not being distributable in games, I have Poser 4 (from MetaCreations, pre-Curious Labs) and have never seen anything in its docs about that restriction. I can understand why they'd be touchy about giving out their original models, but mine will be modified from the originals, converted into a different format, and Moleboxed.
As for getting animated Poser models into a game, I've just ordered a Carrara 4 Pro upgrade that's supposed to be able to import Poser figures and animations. Carrara uses bones, so I'll be interested to see how well it integrates the Poser stuff and how well that can be exported in standard formats.