I modeled this hair style for a character I'm working on. The left picture is what I modeled and rendered in Max. The right is how it looks after it's imported into Poser. I exported the model from Max as an obj file and imported it into Poser. The problem is, it imports into poser as a single object. I want to be able to change the colors of the hair and curlers independantly of each other. Is there a way to import an obj file into poser as multiple items rather than a single item without having to try and piecemeal several files in poser? I'm still new to 3D and am pulling my own hair out trying to figure this out. Can anybody help me? Does this even make sense to anyone? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Whisper

OOppps!! I forgot, I wanted to thank Bushi for the RealEyes characters! They're terrific!

Hey, this is great! O.K. take the .obj into uvmapper and after mapping it how you like go to your menue Edit/Select and you'll see you can select by group, by material , by region etc. After selecting the group you want it should be highlighted in red, go to Edit/Assign and assign it to new material, name it and do the same for the other group. Once this is done make sure you resave the .obj. If you like save it under a different name just to be safe and then take it into poser, it should have the different materials you assigned. Oh, and don't leave spaces in the material's names because if you try to save as a smart prop Poser will not recognize them. I had prepared a mini tut on this with pics so if you're still unclear let me know and I'll send it.

Kalypso, Thankyou,thankyou,thankyou!!!! You've saved not only whats left of my hair, but my sanity as well! It worked like a charm! This is how it looks now in Poser! And here I thought UV Mapper was only for making texture maps. (slaps forhead) What I dufus I am! Thank you very much! Now, if I can figure out how to reduce the file size (almost 5 meg!) I'll post it in free stuff if anyone is interested.

I'm glad it worked for you :) So long as there are separate groups it's not a problem, only when the object is one group. And UVMapper is an indispensable utility for which we should thank Steve Cox :) It'd be great if you could reduce it in size, I know it has sth to do with polygon count and I'm sure I've heard this can be done. Actually I had wanted to use sth like this but had to do it with Cosmo hair since I can't model. This is really something that was missing.

It is probably too late, but a suggestion: the hair/curlers seem to be repeating units, so if you could start with one unit - map it as a flat sheet in OBJ format map in UVMapper and then take it into your modeler and duplicate it - i.e. premap it. You would have one group with potentially as many materials as curlers, but you could duplicate the material names to as many curler colors as there are. I wonder if you could do one unit, and do the duplication in Poser and export that as a prop and then import it as a single group.

Jaager, That's an interesting ideal. I had to sit and think about it for a minute to understand what you were saying, but it's definately worth looking into. I've managed to reduce the file size a little, but it's still too big. Maybe this will help. I definately look into it after I redo my hard drive. I updated some drivers, now eveything is acting all screwy. Thanks for the suggestion!

whisper, Whilst within Max.... assign materiels to each part... the nice thing is.. you can assign the same materiel for.. oh.. say all the hair... then another for the curlers... etc... when you export.. save with Max materiels co-ordinates... I've "re-done" a few props in this manner... so instead of one materiel for the whole prop... it's been separated.. The only catch would be applying textures... then UVMapper comes in really handy ) Cheers, Wizzard

Thanks Wizzard, I'll give that a try too. I'm still playing with this prop to reduce the file size. I got it down to 4 meg. It seems that when I add the uv mapping coordinates, it's doubling the file size. So I'm open to any and all suggestions!

I had another thought. If you make one curler and import multiples into Poser to make the prop and use the scalp prop from Nene as the base, you can do different sizes of curlers with no change in mapping. I think the secret to hair is the texture. A simple grid , maybe with two layers for transMapping. The plastic part only needs enough splines/segments to make sure that it is smooth. It is tempting to use too many segments in the sweep path. If you are lean here it may reduce the size.