Hi All.
Is anyone using Greenbriar's plugins to get Poser5 data to Lightwave 8?? I bought most of 'em, but am having limited luck with the things. CR2 Loader works well enough, but has trouble building a mesh from morphs. You wind up with the base mesh, and a bunch of morphs that you can apply manually with MorphMixer. CR2Rigger usually works, but crashes Lightwave on some models, and won't create the IK chain on them. My biggest problem has been with Animation Loader. I've never gotten it to work. It gives you SOMETHING, just not what you wanted. I've tried everything I can think of. Is there a trick to it I'm not aware of?

Instead of doing all that work, spending tme and money, couldn't you just save you poser file as an .obj then import into Lightwave? I've never used Lightwave and dont have it but when I import 3d objects I always save my poser files as .obj. Makes life easier and it's not so expensive.

I don't have the animation loader, just the loader/rigger but I know it doesn't work right with Lightwave 8. I exchanged a few messages when L8 shipped about it with Greenbriar but no fixes were ever made. Right now I'm using L7.5 to do the convert. The scene files it makes can load into L8 fine (though I don't know about the animation loader). As for doing the Obj files, the main reason you would consider using something like the Greenbriar tools is that you get a fully boned character inside LW with all the morphs it had in Poser. To do that by hand using OBJ exports for something like V3 might take you something like 20 hours or more of painful hand work selecting morphs and exporting them(then importing them). If all you want is a prop, then the OBJ method is fine but anything more than that and you need something better. -Matt

have you guys tried asking in the Lightwave forum? I've only managed to import V3 from Poser To Bryce as an .obj and it works just fine, saves the morphs etc. I've never tried to import to any other 3D program. Could you posibly email the company you bought the product from and ask?

Message edited on: 01/26/2005 02:11

I wish I had LW7.5 so I could at least get the morphed character done automatically. Oh, well. :-( Perhaps we'll get a fix for this soon. I hope.

Maybe it needs a patch? Maybe you could checkout Lightwave's website and findout?

Well, I just sent the developer a bunch of evidence showing Animation Loader failing to import a pose properly. Jpegs, C2Z file, LW scene, the whole shot. We'll see what happens now. I was sort of hoping to find someone who'd gotten it to work on ANY version of Lightwave. Oh, well. We'll see what he says...... (sigh)

I heard from Greenbriar this morning. They say to turn OFF the "Connect and Parent Bones" option in CR2 Load. Apparently it goofs up the skeleton, and could cause the Animation Loader to make a big mess. I'll be giving that a try ASAP.

Success!!! :-D Greenbriar determined that I had an option selected in CR2 Loader that, several steps later, was causing Animation Loader to fail. I guess the doc could use some information on how to make all these plugins play well together. So, that takes care of the biggest issue. Thank heavens. I've figured a good workaround for the smaller problems in Cr2 Loader. Which is to say apply the head and face morphs in Poser. Import the model into LW8. THEN apply the body morphs with Morph Mixer. I think that'll work. Big relief! This will save me tons of time.

This discussion has been interesting, because I've been thinking about getting the Greenbriar plugins. I'm using LW8.