First Question:

I'm running Poser 5 and I'm trying to use a 3-rd party tool to make a morph target from a body part. According to the tutorial here, I need to check some checkboxes when I export the body part. But in Poser 5, although the dialog presents the checkboxes, it won't let me check them!

Reference:
http://www.renderosity.com/photos/tuts/TutNode1436.jpg

Is this a Poser 5-ism or am I missing something?

Second Question:
The 3-rd party modeling tool is Blender. If I import an OBJ and immediately export it without performing any other operations in Blender, it looks like the vertexes are output in a completely different order. This is not good if you're trying to make a morph target, I presume.

Is there some setting or tool that avoids this?

As an aside: if I make a model from scratch in Blender and then alter it I have no trouble with using the alteration as a morph target, so Blender's vertex ordering is at least self-consistent.

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice.

I'm on a Mac, so that probably won't help you, but I have seen instances in P5 dialogs (render options) where radio buttons can't be clicked directly and have their settings stay. The text beside the radio button needs to be clicked to change the setting. Maybe that will help your check box scenario. Sorry I don't have blender, so I can't help with your second question.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12460

I've heard of dialogs getting 'stuck' like this - one tip is to switch to another window (e.g. open Notepad), then go back to Poser. Worth a try, anyway. I also don't have Blender, but some 3D apps don't bother about preserving vertex order; most of the time it isn't important. The problem is probably in the OBJ import/export routines, and the Blender forum might be the best place to get a timely response. [link] If you aren't wedded to Blender, Wings and Anim8or (both free) can be used to make morph targets without trouble. I use Anim8or myself, although Wings probably has more capabilities.

The check boxes don't seem to be "stuck", exactly. I can UNCHECK the two that are normally checked, but I can't CHECK anything except those two. I can't recall if I tried switching focus to another application at that point or not, but I'll give that a try tonight.

As for the problem with the vertex order (Does anybody need a "crumple paper" morph?), well I'm not wedded to Blender, exactly, but neither Wings nor Anim8or seem to comprehend my Wacom Graphire II tablet -- they "over-control" making it impossible to use the mouse at all -- and I won't give up my tablet; it's the best pointing device I've ever used (and I've owned a computer of some sort for nearly 30 years). This is not a knock on those programs: their user interfaces are WAY easier to grok than Blender's, but on my hardware platform (Windows XP Pro on a P4 2 GHz with 640 MB of RAM, 280 GB of hard disk, a high-color graphics card running at 1600x1200 and the aforementioned Graphire)they just don't work properly.

Actually, Blender has a little trouble with the Graphire also, but the problem is only with the scroll wheel -- Blender can't seem to tell the difference between scroll up and scroll down -- but there is an alternative designed for people who use a mouse without a wheel and I can live with that work-around.

Anyway, thanks for your input and I'll check out the Blender forum if I can find it. (Your message may have included the URL, but all that displays here is "[link]".

Look at the top of my message, where it says "Attached Link". Renderosity does allow HTML, but I can't be bothered to type the tags most days unless I have more than one link to put in a message. :)

Um... brain cells not firing properly today, I guess. :/ Okay, I'll move discussion on the second question to the blender forum and see what the experts over there can tell me. Thanks.

Thanks to all. Question one is now answered -- switching focus off Poser and back was sufficient to enable me to check and un-check the boxes. No luck so far on question two. The question was asked on the Bryce forum but to date has generated no definite solution.

Question Two: problem solved. There's a downloadable Python script that superceeds the built-in OBJ I/O conversion and preserves vertex ordering. Go to the Blender.org site and look for import/export scripts. The one you want is obj_io_modif236.py.