Why do some objects have multiple materials when others only have one? I've been trying to get useable files out of a program called Solidworks. A program I know nothing about and my Brother who knows it well knows nothing about Poser. :/ We finaly succeeded to get a working obj but it came into Poser as one material. The obj was pretty simple a scoop for a Bobcat. I vast answer I'm sure? Any thoughts or direction would be most appreciated. Thanks! Scott

Assuming the object had multiple materials in Solidworks, I would check the export options for the modeling program. It sounds like the assigned material zones probably weren't exported. Just a guess. I know nothing about Solidworks....

click on the object in the poser group editor and see if there are other materials available. you may have used non-standard group/material names.

You can always add materials through UV mapper if it has only one material. Sometimes mechanical software like SolidWorks, will create a model but then condense the materials as it is imported. I deal alot with this too when you work out of AutoCaD. Also, see if Solid Works will export your file in .3ds format, if it does, it should keep materials locked in. How are the materials being assigned in Solid Works, globally?

Sharen

Message edited on: 03/17/2006 04:18

Hey SAMS3D. I have a few of your freebies. ") Great Stuff! Many thanks!!! Unfortunetly my Solidworks expert, brother/engineer is in another state. We do e-mail back and forth but both being real busy sometimes there are gaps between replys. I am waiting now to hear back about all above replys. Many Thanks. Before his Company switched over to Solidworks he was using AutoCad. Do you think this is a better program for making items that can be used "flawlessly" in Poser? You have some great items available! Were they AutoCad? I know nothing about this end of it and am craving to know more. Between the 2 of us I think we can create some incredible stuff. I've given up twice already but as you can see I'm still interested. Thanks Huge for adding in here. I really appreciate it. UV mapper (the full version) unfortunetly is only avail on PC's. I have one here at home but it's not a strong machine, the simplest things take years.;) So I don't even look at it. The only place I can use UVM is at work and it's tuff most times to putt everything aside to figure things out. I will have to look into that a bit more when I get back to work over this weekend. Miss Nancy; yes it's definetly only showing one material. CAGE; He said that their were no options when saving it to obj. The plugin he got 3rd party so I'm not sure if maybe their might be some other better plugin or not. Thanks to all! Scott

there's a free version of UVMapper for OS X, but if you wanna use something other than a crippled P.O.S. like that, I would suggest using cheetah 3D instead for the UVMapping functions.

Everything we made is created first in AutoCad. If you have any models in AutoCad I can help you out. Don't give up at all, espesially if you really want to see this happen, you never know what you will come up with and what will happen. I was just ask to be an illustrator a company. Been doing this for years and finally got a great opportunity to finally become a graphic illustrator professionally. Don't give up. Sharen

I use SW and Poser. SW will assign the most rudimentry of materials to the model. Those materials are only adaquate for rendering with PhotoWorks from within SW. I'm assuming that you are converting your SW part to OBJ with Polytrans (my choice) or some other conversion routine. SW assigns poor if any UV maps to the parts and you will need to map and group all of your exported/converted SW parts. While SW is a great 2 1/2D modeler and is outstanding for mechanical modeling, there are a lot of compromises necessary for it's use with Poser. If interested, you can look at one of my sites where all the valves and "hardware" were modeled in SW, converted, mapped and grouped and added to Poser scenes for the web content. Feel free to ask any other SW related questions. Mike http://www.machiningsolutions.org