I have a 'poser tools' folder where I keep all those little apps that 'prop' poser up, if you'll excuse the pun. (We're talking small, usually free, mini-apps here, not Photoshop or Bryce). In alphabetical order, here we go.... Anim8or - free modelling app I use for making 90% of my morphs. Frequent use (like 4/5 times a week) Compose - I just installed the java to use this, so I'll try it. Modifies obj files. Correct Reference - Fixes MAT paths. Used it once. Cr2Editor - The John Stallings app. I use this EVERY day. Dial cleaner - DAZ app for vicki 3 - Unused, since I only opened v3 once and looked at her, then spent 4 or 5 hours playing with the Readscripts. LOL. Edit Pad - People say this is better than Notepad. Haven't gotten around to trying it yet, but I will. I also use Notepad on a daily basis. Furfur - makes the 'hair generator' into a 'usable' obj (if you want 10 meg hair props, that is). Used it twice. MatPoseEdit - For editing MATs. Used it twice, prefer Cr2Editor. Morph Manager - I used to use this all the time, but haven't touched it in years. Morph Squeeze - Never used it. Objaction Mover - Occasionally Objtwoface - Never used it. Plant Studio - Well, I keep trying, but can't seem to get tall, climbing plants out of it. P3dO - Yarp's explorer. Occasional use, but it's mostly quicker to open poser and find what I want. Prop Viewer - Very handy for finding out what that 'chairV2.7.obj' that you made actually looks like. Renamer - Frequent use. The best for renaming extensions, files, folders, sub-folders and generally converting MATs to other libraries. Scaler - Scales obj files. Used it once or twice. Unwrap - A uv mapper. Never used it. UV Mapper (Pro) - This is the big one for me. EVERY day without fail, I have this open. My main apps are max, poser, uv mapper and Cr2Editor. I should add to this list PHI Builder, which resides in Runtime, and Injection Pose Builder, which I haven't opened. I also got schlabber's beta of remote keys, but haven't had time to look at it. It should be useful. Why aren't there more hours in the day? Mind you, I'm mainly interested in modelling and making figures, and I only use poser to check that everything works properly. I'm sure other people use these 'helpers' (and others) in totally different proportions. OK. I showed mine. Now show me yours! mac

In addition to the ones listed above ...

LithUnwrap (UV-mapping and file conversion, freeware)

MilkShape (3D modeler, $25 trialware)

TMPG Enc (video editing and MPEG conversion, freeware)

VirtualDub (video editor, freeware)

.

Prop viewer.....read this post & went to get it to see what it was like. My new favourite toy. I just wish I could use it as a screen saver. Shanna :-)

uvmapper, and cr2editor are the ones i basically use. plus psp for texture painting. i do my very best to make as close to "everything" that i put in my renders. why??? long ago, when i first joined this site...there was a huge flamewar about warez. i was afraid that if i used someone elses...even free stuff...i stood the change of being caught in that witch hunt. i also have tailor, and poser wizard. they don't work well with v3...so, i am resuming a love/hate relationship with postwork.

Heh, heh. Cool isn't it? LD, LithUnwrap. Yeah, I listed it, but as 'Unwrap'. Same app tho' (Is it any good?) mac

i like lithunwrap....why...i can get it to do more than uvmapper. you actually can pull points with it.

how about 3D model format conversion software: - Crossroads 3D - 3D Exploration Although Ive only taken LithUnwrap for a single test drive, Id also have to cast a vote for UV Mapper as the additional app I find myself using (and appreciate) the most.

Cool thread. I use a bunch of the ones above plus: Tailor - some use it, some don't. I happen to use it quite a bit Grouper - for those using another program like Bryce. Helps in rearranging the OBJ. BTW, I use EditPad and it's a lot nicer than notepad. Especially for search and replace.

LithUnwrap is very good, actually, even though its creator has moved on to a commercial version (Ultimate Unwrap 3D). It has many of the same features found in UVMapper Pro (including the 3D preview). Plus, it supports multiple file formats, rather than just Wavefront .obj. I occasionally use it for file conversion, in addition to mapping. The software is PC-only, however.

"Easy Pose Underground" by Ajax has become a fav of mine! And of course PBooost. -BTW you can pull points with UV mapper.

I agree, EditPad rocks! I use most of the things listed in the entry thread. I love MATPoseEdit, UVMapper and P3DO. I wish Cr2Editor was a bit more robust. It chokes with some of the newer stuff. I set up P3DO to browse directories via a right-click in Windows Explorer, works pretty fast for me that way. I don't have PBooost, but I set up windows batch files to move things around, depending on the "genre" I'm working on. I can't really add too much to the list but... CKRename - freeware mass renaming utility - Use this quite often as I move MAT poses into Cameras and Faces. I also use P-Wizard a lot, not freeware but great for doing various tasks. Good investment, depending on what you use Poser for.

I just bought ShapeMagic over at 3D Commune. Yes, I am a total newbie to modeling, have no idea what I'm doing, and am very excited to finally be giving it a go. Love that Object Viewer. Fun to twirl things around in. I just downloaded Anim8or a few days ago and was very impressed with how intuitive the GUI is. Good, clear instructions, too. Had fun in Poser with mega-hi-res primitives cranked out in seconds. I'd love to try using Anim8or to create morphs, but haven't the slightest idea how to do it. Can anyone point me to tutorials along those lines? TIA.

Same for me , I have been a fan of LithUnwrap for a few years now when i was making stuff for ( embaressed to say ) sims . Ok so just shoot me now . Yes i played it .

The biggest things I use are Maconvertor and I have used the Mac Mat pose thinger. For the most part that is it since I am on a Mac. I do used BBEdit for my cr2 editing.

Used to use Morph Manager a lot, then I got CR2 Editor and until V3 used to use that, and occasionally use UVMapper. I find I'm using Poser Wizard for removing references to .bum files these days! What is Renamer? Where can I get it? It sounds very useful.

Maconverter and BBEdit Lite very often. (I recently discovered that BBEdit can do a Search & Replace in several files at a time. Very useful.)
Macinstaller sometimes (I'm working my way through the libraries and letting Macinstaller put in those numbers for the directories that the textures are in, things load much faster that way).
ResEdit to add the preview pics to the cr2's, pz2 etc, either if I download something with a png preview or I want to make a preview from a rendered pic. Thumbnailer doesn't work for me as I am on OSX.
Maconstructor sometimes to copy morphs from one figure to another.
Uvsdecoder.
A little perl script by dodger to pull out an obj-file from a pp2 with embedded geometry.
And - it's not really a separate program - a little action I made in Photoshop that resizes a (square) pic to 91 x 91.

Sigh, and I just paid $20 for a rename util. Oh well, lol I never use notepad, edit pad pro is the greatest, you should try it out maclean. 8^) Marque

I don't model, doesn't interest me. I do Poser. I use: Morph Manager P3dOExplorer Wordpad Objaction Mover and even good old Morpher.

.... and Tailor of course. :] Fish

bm

So no one uses Morph Manager anymore? I guess I can stop working on an upgrade then.

oh - my own converted RemoteKeys for Poser - since I'm using that I'm posing a lot faster :o) I'm currently workimng with that in the testing phase - I hope it'll be available soon (It'll be a free gift for everyone who wants it) lol - no Mason - I would work with it - the problem is: I don't have the time to swap morphs - toooo many poses :o)

Oh .. I use maconstructor as well .. the mac version of morph manager kind of. And I am sure that a ton of people use morph manager Mason :) I jsut can't since I am on a Mac. Not that many people have replied to this thread.

Fish Nose just mentioned Morph manager Mason. Kruse, only app I know that can do what you are asking is Lightwave's "Merge Points". You can tell it to merge points that are a specified distance from each other.

Maconverter and Macinstaller. And I'm happy to find an answer to my question last night in another thread about a way to use things that require ObjactionMover on a Mac. Now I'm off to install Maconstructor and see if I can figure out how to use it....I don't know what I'd do without this forum :)))

Lessee: UVmapperPro - everyday. Way too much Morphmanager - anytime I'm building a character or collapsing morphs (couple times a week?) filelistmaker - lists files in a directory as txt. Great for 'packing lists' in readme's (plus its teensy) textureprocessor - kind of a procedural tiling 2d texture making thing. Takes some jiggling to get useful results, but makes good base tiles for clothing textures. p3do, Paintshop (to convert tubes to PSD files), objaction mover, plantstudio, and shapemaker. Oh and my excel macro dial randomizer thingy Main programs: Photoshop, Poser, Bryce, CorelDraw pshop filters: Eyecandy, Alienskin, Kai's powertools, Convolver (old)

rose & others,

Renamer can be found here

Xoconostle,

Steve Shanks did a good tute on face morphs in Anim8or. It's at internet eye 3d or something, but I don't have the link. If you tell me what you want to morph, maybe I can post a few tips for you.

EditPad,

Yeah, I should get around to it. It's just so easy to keep using notepad, which I know, as opposed to losing time trying to figure out a new one. When I finish my current project, I'll find the time for all these things.

Mason,

Don't be offended. LOL. Morph Manager is one the best apps around. I only stopped using it when I started doing cr2 work. Now I have Cr2Editor permanantly open, it's easier just to drag 'n' drop between cr2s. But I'm in a total minority with that.

Netherworks,

Cr2Editor only chokes on me with dodgy MAT files. Usually you find the brackets are missing or something. I've opened vicki 3 (base) with no probs. Unless you're trying to open her with all the morphs at 120 megs! She's a big girl.

Sclabber,

I tried out remote keys yesterday. First chance I had to use it. It looks really good, although it's use is limited to me since I hardly ever pose figures now. But I'd like to sit down and re-program it for my own poser use and with other apps. I'm sure it'll be very useful for most of the community though.

Lyrra,

What's Filelistmaker? That sounds like something I could use a lot.

I forgot about 3d conversion apps. I don't use any. For some reason, I'm not sure if I would trust them to work properly, but that's probably just some weird prejudice I have, not based on any facts whatsooever. Anyway, I only use 3ds and obj and don't need to convert.

mac

maclean - I'm not hurt. I'm just curious if the app has outlived its usefulness and so I don't need to spend time on the update. The update currently allows multiple cr2s open, drag and drop between them, sorting them etc as well as drag and drop channels etc. I would imagine a quicky snap tool for obj files would be handy. Of course it shouldn't weld but snap to a tolerance. I wish I could just buy more time from the renderosity store instead of just products. Way too many irons in the fire as is.

xoconostle,

Here's the link to the steve shanks tute for anim8or. You might also want to check a lnk I just found TutorialHunt.com for all sorts of poser and 3d tutes.

mac

Used daily: WordPad under XP (I no longer have editpad installed but used it under Win98) and all Poser extensions are associated to Wordpad. Explorer (XP) in thumbnail view...great for organizing and searching for files. UVMapper for obvious reasons. Not used daily but when needed is indispensable. Bryce as a file converter (no need for a dedicated converter. Great for converting, for example, .3ds files to .obj to bring into UVMapper) Correct Reference Renamefiles WinZip P3DO or Poser itself to convert .rsr to .png Corel Photopaint to convert .bum to .jpg ACDSee to view all my renders. But it stopped working and I don't know why, so now I'm using Irfanview. Dialcleaner Grouper Mover and RTEncoder There are others I have and use such as Tailor, P-Wizard, and MorphManager...just not used as frequently. I spend most of my Poser time installing stuff rather than doing stuff unfortunately.

Attached Link: VIM - Vi IMproved -- the best code editor on Earth

*Is there any tool, which compares each vertex in .obj and equals vertexes with varariances less then 0.01 pt (f.e.)? You could do this in the vim text editor with a regex global search and replace, by shortening the precision of all the vertices that are over a certain precision. Something like: :%s/(d.dddddd)d+/1/ would shorten all the vertex precisions to 6 decimal places (2 less than UVMapper saves them as)

Keep in mind that depending on the precision required of the geometry this could cause degenerate facets -- it all depends on how detailed the mesh is.

I didn't see these mentioned... Autocad 2000 3DSMAX I'm striving to earn the reputation of Mechanical Engineer, right now my title is Peon. Fabrication is my thing I guess, using the above (along with Poser) helps to prove out my ideas ahead of time.

Well, I use max more than poser, but we were talking mini-apps here, not mega-apps! These little freebies are the things that make life with poser bearable. If they didn't exist, I doubt if poser would even be usable. mac

Yeap, Maclean! You said it! Poser would be pretty lame without all those "nifty" ulitties & all the Content available! Not one application comes close with available Content, tutorials, add-ons, etc...IMHO. I use all of the Above. Really! I'm a Utility "Junkie"!! LOL The best 3D converter IMHO is 3DExploration. Mason, I agree! We need 36 hour Days! :-) And i Love your MManager! "weld" vertices could cause "Degenerate" faces! I played for 2 hours to find the right amount to use when i was "Sowing" V3's head to V2's upperNeck in MAX! The "Breakage" that occurs usually is cause of "extreme" posing! When was the last time anyone turn "limits" on in Poser? :-) Marco

Mason!!!!! PLEASE go on working with MM - I love that proggy. I would really, really like to see it develop even further. I've been waiting eagerly for a new version for a long time :o) Suggestions 1 The possibility to highlight multiple MTs with rubberband and copy or delete 2 Resizable window size for the app I also use it a lot for creating Scale MOR pose files - I rename a cr2 to pz2 and then extract and copy the scale info to a null pz2 (since Poser doesn't include scale in a pz2). Works perfectly! :] Fish

When was the last time anyone turn "limits" on in Poser? Almost all the time. As a matter of fact, my JICC 3000 figure loads with the logical limits hard-set, but I include SET poses to disable them, either all or by body part -- but I do it that way so the user has to think about it before they do it. Most of the hard logical limits are there so that it's impossible to pose, for instance, the forearm going through the upper arm, unless you load the SET pose that turns the limits off.

forgot some: v2 to v3 convertor, Tailor and Pwizard (the swiss army knife of poser tools) Filelistmaker is around here someplace ... the merchants resource page has a link to it, but it may also be in freestuff. Little tiny program, all it does is list files in a dir, or dir tree. You point it at your folder, set the options and push the button. It spits out a txt files listing all the files, and subfolders. Wonderful for Packing lists in a readme. Especially for Poser stuff which has a bazillion associated files.

I use Properties Plus to rename file extensions - comes in handy when moving MAT and MOR files to directories other than the pose library.

I also find ACD's PicaView to be very handy for any kind of graphics work. You can View, Print, Copy and Convert on the fly.

Also use RSR Converter for creating my own custom rsrs.

I use Morph Manager all the time Mason - it is a wonderful program and I thank you very kindly for creating it ;)

'When was the last time anyone turn "limits" on in Poser?' I also hard-code limits into my stuff, but it's all furniture. You don't want to open a door or window and have it swing round and crash through the wall, do you? And like dodger, I use MATs (I know they're not MATs really, but it's become the generic name), to move the joint parameters around and change the limits. If a window is set to open inwards in a figure, and you want to open it outwards, you would have to move the JPs to the correct point of rotation, and reverse the limits. One MAT does it all. So limits may not be so great for humans, but for everything else, they're very useful. Mason 'Resizable window size for the app' Abso - frickin' - lutely!! mac Thx Lyrra. I'll look for filelistmaker.

'but I include SET poses to disable them' dodger, Now THAT is a good name for them. Not only is it better than position/placement/whatever, but it can also covers umpteen different types of 'MAT'. Basically anything that doesn't affect MATerials or MORphs. Let's start a campaign to adopt SET as a convention. I'll use it in my next pack to class them all (if I can steal it from you). I was going to use POS, but SET is more descriptive. mac

It's cool with me B^)

I mostly use: 3D Max ver 3.1 - Don't leave home without it! Poser 4 - You shouldn't create stuff for sale in anything newer. PhotoShop 5.5 - Last version before they destroyed the interface Microsoft Word - (!) Not just for read-me's, too, lots of CR2 editing is done in it. UV Mapper - Great program! "Old" CR2 Editor - I still like it best (sorry Dan!), but it crashes Win 2K a lot of opened with Max running. Objaction Scaler- Essential if you use Max, due to the Habaware scaling bug MTMirror - Just started using this, works great! RSR - Coonverter - When you need special thums PHIBuilder - For when you have to roll your own Other stuff is "once in awhile".

Jim, that's true: Harbware's OBJ/Plug for Max3 as a Scale bug. But, version 4 is right on!(Scale 1 for I/O) Although, i have C4D, i still use Max for 90% of the Modeling bit. But, i prefer C4D's Render Engine(Way Faster!) Yes, Pshop 5.5 is still my fav version of it. Newer doesn't always mean better! :-) Tailor(Almost all my Vic clothes have been "Tailored". P-Wizard(Love it). An i would count Poser as a Tool also! I can easily "Recut" P4W clothes to accomodate Vicky, by just using the magnets & the Group tool. Look for a tread "a small venture"(Quick Walktrough) of the process. Yawn... Sorry! Ready a very thick book on Programming on a Mac... Why? Well, it's a surprise! Marco

Microsoft Word - (!) Not just for read-me's, too, lots of CR2 editing is done in it. Egads, that's like racing a bus in the Indy 500. vim vim vim. It's amazingly powerful, widely supported, available for damned near everything, open source, and free. I keep telling people, but no one seems to listen.