Anyone know of a tool to convert Poser figures to DTSs?

#1 Greenbriar Studios has a number of tools for such things. You should understand, though, that Poser models 1) have license restrictions for the meshes and 2) are designed for procedural rendering and not real-time rendering. The poly count is extremely high simply to make sure that they look great in high-quality renders. Since you're looking at using T2D, setting up your camera and animations and then rendering them out should do you extremely well.

#2 Travis.. haven't used Poser in some time, but if I am not mistaken it will export to file types that may allow your models to be imported by programs with .dts exporting capabilities.. Milkshape,Gamespace,Maya,Max,Lightwave,etc,etc... (milkshape is just $20 and has an excellent .dts exporter)..

example:
I use Silo to model in and then save out to .3ds files.. bring into Milkshape.. export out to .obj for use in UVmapper (for making skins).. then back to Milkshape where I export to .dts for Torque..


edit: broken italics

#3 @Travis

You'd have to export the figure (or use the base 'obj' file in Poser's Geometries sub folder), and import the object into another 3D program.

However, the DTS format seems to blow up when trying to handle objects with over 10,000 polygons. Most Poser figures have at least 30-70,000 polygons except the early Poser 3 figures -- the other ones won't work as DTS objects without using a polygon reduction tool of some kind (such as qemloss in Lightwave).

Finally, the licensing restrictions will bite you if you actually release a game with 3D models directly derived from Poser figures. I've read that DAZ (one of the third party Poser model vendors) threatened to sue someone who hand-copied a UV map that was compatible with one of DAZ's so they could use the same textures.

A far better idea is to use Poser to render the frames of your models, then use the images in T2D. There will be no license issues, and you won't be taxing the engine trying to handle too many polygons. Poser is a great tool for rendering sprite image frames. In fact, I find it quicker and easier to use for this purpose than a higher end tool like Lightwave.

#4 Using poser to render is still the best method if using their models or Daz content. You can inquire about using Daz content meshes and textures directly through Daz3D and they will work with you on a case-by-case basis as long as you can assure that the content is protected and not available to others who have not licensed it from Daz. But you have to ask. Just using it and asking for forgiveness later is not a good policy when it comes to licensing content.