OK... (also posting in Poser forum) Over the last two years my group has designed a wide variety of furniture pieces in CAD for our clients. These were developed so that exact dimensions could be used for CAM manufacturing/cutting and general forensic work (we do vizualiztion). My questions: Since we have a huge catalog of the objects (all DXFs), what is the best way for me to bring these in for use in Poser (yes I know Poser imports DXFs)? I wil be doing this to sell some of the objects in the online stores and to give others away for free. 1. I have read that there are some issues with Poser rounding straight edges, which would be a problem for most of our designs, however, I did see one message that said this is not a problem with DXFs. Is this true? 2. Can someone point me to a quick tutorial for making morph targets for these objects. Many of the pieces of furniture have separate doors/drawers/etc that are movable, and I would like to props to reflect that. My guess is that this will be the most time consuming part of the translation. 3. I am not a huge user of Poser, as we use it mostly to set up basic poses using characters/props to import into Max via ProPack for rendering/and lots of postwork in Premier. For the average Poser user, what are fair polygon counts for Poser props so that it will not chug down the average scene for regular/power users? This will help me in reducing polys where needed to help out the average users. If there is somewhere where this is discussed, I would appreciate pointers to that location. As I said, I have a HUGE inventory of objects to convert. - Ray

First: SAMS3D uses Autocad to make their props, so Sharen will most likely jump in and give you advice. About the polygon count: Less is better. The fewer possible polys, the more stuff you will be able to load into the scene before Poser starts to crawl.

Attached Link: http://www.uvmapper.com

Whilst DXF format will give you sharp edges in Poser, you will not be able to apply any textures. This in my view will severely reduce their appeal. Better to use OBJ format and use the split vertices tool in UVMapper to keep everything crisp. Free Lite version at the link. Also look at the tutorials there, particularly the one with the dice.

If you have AutoCad 2000 you can export in 3DS format, it's much better as far as textures go. AutoCad don't do obj format Phil.

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Hey! Good question! Unfortunately I don't know how to get the dxf from autocad to work either. "I get Object has no surface information" or some such... I remember about a year+ or so I was having a similar issue, and some kind soul posted that an autocad solid could be exploded and somehow told to have vertexes. If indeed PhilC is right (by the way PhilC I owe you a bow for your efforts with Poser 5 dyna clothes and your unbelievable generosity in the way of free stuff, tutorials, and advice) that there is no way to get the autocad dxf into Poser in a useable format then we go to 3ds which in general I havent had luck with either. Sirkrit? could you please, if you would be so kind, maybe do noobie step by step for autocad to poser through 3ds? (Lousy just took autocad off system two days ago...) I also use autocad 2000 at work, designing signage, and I am so fast with it that any other modeler seems like starting all over. Plus, raydream doesn't boolean for a crap, and I was hoping that autocad might do a much better job at just about everything when it comes to machine/archetectural models. Also, I can design neon signs, channel letters, logos, etc. for use in poser scenes. Ryamka, I also have a bunch of files to convert, but sadly the intellectual property of the clients. I don't know if this would apply to you, per se, but I'm sure I'll be having to design all new stuff if I want to sell it. Anyway, here's to hopes we can find a way to convert autocad models!

Oh about the drawers and moving doors and stuff, each "part" must be material zoned and made into a poseable "limb". Then boned and have translation dials created for them that have limits and specific axes of rotation, whether "opening", or "sliding". We can do this in Pro-Pack or Poser 5 set-up rooms, but Poser 4 alone is a cr2 editing thing. I am sure if we can come up with a way to get autocad models set up with material zones, the rest is not at all quick and painless, but doable.

LOL! caravaggio I never said I knew how to take stuff from AutoCad to Poser. I use AutoCad at work for Drafting Blueprints. (2D not 3D!) I just know it can export 3DS. And 3DS is way better then DXF when it comes to Poser.

Hey guys, I appreciate the discussion. I am in the early stages of playing around with the export/import to try to get a feel for the whole process, so the more suggestions the better to shorten the workload. Just for ref, I have AutoCAD 2004, Max 5.1 (and v4), Poser 4.03, ProPack. No Poser 5. I decided it was not worth the headache, plus I already have Max4 + ProPack for some creative efforts. Plus I just downloaded the demo to UVWrapper. As I mentioned originally, the extent of our use of Poser has mostly been to create "dolls" that are then brought into Max to be used for rendering and animation torecreate "events", so the whole process of going "backwards" into Poser is new to me, since most of my experience in poser is just loading/clothing/exporting. From what I can gather my main issues are going to be: 1. Smoothing of straight edges 2. Zoning and boning (catchy, but sounds like could get you arrested in most states) So keep the suggestions coming, as you can be sure I will keep the questions flowing. - Ray

There's no REAL need to "bone" things like furniture. It is far easier to just parent them together and then set the pivots so that they fit for say a hinge. My PERSONAL feeling is that something like a chest of drawers doesn't belong in the figures pallette. It's a PROP and should be in Props. The furniture and stuff I have that are characters... well I allways forget about it coz when I look for a prop, that's where I look :o) But I know SAMS3D makes most of their furniture things into characters so of course it's doable. I just think it's easier to let them stay props. That doesn't mean they can't move :o) Something like my Complete Kitchen (RMP) is made that way.

ryamka, sorry we are late to jump into this conversation, we had out of town guest come over, but they are now gone. Okay, AutoCAD props....LOL...it is way easier then most think. We do have to do some specific things, but they are all little tricks we have learned because we use AutoCAD. AutoCAD is particular and if you want it to work well you have to do these things. There is like I said lots of little things to do to avoid problems with Poser 4, Pro and now Poser 5. You want to make your models work in all of them, because so many people use these applications, also in Vue d'Esprit and Byrce. If you IM me I will send you our procedure if you are interested. I will probably write another tutorial specifiacally for AutoCAD because more and more people are using it, as like before not many used it for these kinds of applications. Due to the fact that it is used so widely in Engineering. But like I said, you IM me if you are still interested and I will write it all down for you and you will be good to go. I don't want to write here cause it may take up a lot of space and I want to show you examples. I will eventually finish my tut, but not right now. Sharen

Oh yes and the dice tutorial is great, but it won't do you any good until the model turns to an object format and that has to be done right the first time. Sharen

One more thing, ernyoka1 is correct we make our props so they can always be figures not just props, one main reason, it takes the pressure off of the pose library, one less catagory for the pose, and the figures library handles this well. Of course the props library would handle this just as well, but most of our props have poseable parts and we like to keep everything as simple as possible, meaning all our work is found in one library. Sharen

Hello Sharen! I will love to learn your technique for Autocad models, but since I use it at work and am having AutoCad nightmares at night, I will cheerfully wait for the tut you are writing! P.S. I have 2000 and not any mechanical/architectural desktop add-ons. Thank you in advance, caravaggio

Attached Link: http://home.europa.com/~keithr/Crossroads/index.html

Point #1: As PhilC said splitting vertices the UV Mapper should fix the straight edge bit, once you have converted to Wavefront Object (obj) format. There is a free utility called Crossroads that should be capable of converting 3DS to OBJ (see link above). Point #2: Morphs won't help you much with furnature. You have 3 options that I can think of, all of them depend on you exporting the articulated drawer(or what ever)parts as seperate items. a). You can make your chesst of drawers (or what ever) as a figure (cr2). b). Make it as a multi part pp2 (prop) (the problem with this aproach is that to delete it from the doc you have to delete each individual part). c). My prefered option (though I'm sure many will disagree), is to make it as a multi part pp2, then parent it to a NULL Figure that only has a BODY actor, I find this a quick and simple method. In any method you would use translation and/or rotation channels to pose the elements, you would want to use "forceLimits" to limit the movement of elements. With doors you would need to set the origen (some times refered to as the "center point" in figures) to an edge of the door. Point #3: I don't have much to offer on this one. Whilst it's important to keep the poly count down, there is no point in spoiling a good prop with too few polys , you need as many polys as necessary to make any curves look smooth at a reasonable viewing distance, I would concidder that to be no more than 8 foot or 1 Poser unit for most things.