I am struggling with multi-figure renders. If I export the figures and clothing as obj.'s, delete the figures and import the obj.'s back in and then render, have I done a good thing? Does this gobble up less ram? Reduce render quality? Just not work? Thanks in advance for any help.

Technically, yes, it uses fewer resources. Partially because Poser no longer has to deal with all that figure information, but mainly because you've eliminated all the morphs. Render quality shouldn't be impaired, but you'll probably need to spend some time restoring the materials after import, since a lot of that information isn't retained in the OBJ files. There can also be a problem if material names are shared among multiple elements in the same OBJ.

Now correct me if I'm wrong LD But this probably won't speed up actual render time will it? I mean it's the same textures and the same number of polys. But overall ram consumption should be less, getting rid of all that morph data. I doubt it's worth the hassle... Plus if you are like me you will notice something a bit off at the last minute and be unable to fix it once it's "frozen" as an obj.

I've got a python script for P6 that does that for me (keeping materials intact ;-))...

Now correct me if I'm wrong LD But this probably won't speed up actual render time will it?

Probably not, unless the original scene had consumed all your physical memory and was thrashing your swap file.

There's this MineMe script that is included with Poser. As far as I remember it does just that. (only tried it once and that's a long time ago, so my memory may be faltering) Waves @ shorterbus ;o)

BTW: Unless you intend the possessive case, you don't need an apostrophe before "s".

Dizzi. What script is the one you use that keeps materials intact? I only used it once, but as I recall MineMe didn't do that.

I made my own export script (see attachement) that also saves material collections and then applies those to the imported objects. You need to set the frames to export and the temp directory in the script before running it. It'll delete the current figures from the scene, so DO NOT USE THIS ON YOUR ORIGINAL FILE, ONLY ON COPIES.

Whoa! Thanks Dizzi!!! One question since I'm rather inept at decyphering code: Does it reimport to another frame or does it export the figure in each frame of an amination?

I attached a version that exports the current frame, so you only need to edit the path.
(All others are then lost of course :-( )

Message edited on: 01/07/2006 14:58

cool beans. If you'd get the multiframe working, I'd appreciate a heads up. :-) Thanks again!!!

Another approach to reducing memory requirements (with multiple figures, which implies "not closeups")... Radically reduce the size of any texture maps. This only applies if you are rendering for screen; rendering for print is another matter... But consider: If you're using a figure which can be completely seen on your screen, then a 4096 x 4096 texture map for the body (let alone the head) will be squashed down (on the screen) to what? Being generous, an image of 1280 x 1024. So reducing the size of the texture for that figure in a paint program to 1280 x 1280 will not only reduce the size of the texture, it will look BETTER, because paint programs are better at reducing textures than Poser is! 4096 x 4096 = 16777216. At 32 bits/pixel that's (16777216 x 32 / 8) = 67108864 bytes. 1280 x 1280 = 163840. 6553600 bytes. That's a saving of 60,555,264 bytes (~60.5 MB) per texture..... And you can probably get away with smaller.... Overlarge textures are often a show-stopper, unless you're using close-ups.. Cheers, Diolma