OK I went to Cornucopia to read a few tuts...I came across one for importing Poser...I made a white tiger and did "Save" not "Save As" like normal for your .pz3's...It closed my tigers mouth?
Is that odd or what? I wonder if Poser did that or Vue? I save .pz3's all the time and I never saw that happen...which leads me to wonder if it was Vue? See sample pics...Well if you could insert pics without doing a darn link I would have!!! I hate this new format! Any way...could someone who is familiar with importing Poser to Vue5 Please help me? ThanX!!!
CrimsonMoon
 

Duh I am so Blonde today/nite!!! OK there are the two pics...any ideas? ThanX!!!
CM

I think you urgently need to change the setting in Poser 6 that all morphs are saved to an external binary file. In the settings there. Then it will work. And save or save as - i don't think this makes a difference. But saving as pz3 is probably more important, not saving as (compressed) pzz. Dito with the geometry, i think it is important to use obj and not obz (compressed too). Tose compressions caused problems in the past and maybe still does in the trial version you have!

OK..so that I understand this. I set the morphs to be saved as a Binary file? Will my pz3's load up still that are already saved? I have about 150 characters that I have saved in the last few months of working in P6. The external binary file should be on my main or secondary hard drive? And lastly of course, where do I go to change that setting? In my "file" Preferences, Misc., it is already set at these settings.... so is there something I may have missed? Also I think I may need to set up any preferences in Vue that are necessary too! Any help with that is appreciated. So far i think I ;like Vue5Esp...but I have had a few glitches I am sure are from my inexperience and that i just loaded it today. Darn I am impatient! LOL!!! ThanX Wabe! I hope you are here for a bit! Ariana

I think wabe meant the opposite of what he said. Morphs must be saved within the file, uncheck external binary morphs.

Ups - yes. Was a little early this morning when i answered. So Bruno is right - you have to deselct that option.

LOL! I think it is because the darn thing is a trial...I downloaded the Pro version and I think that one might be the best...when I buy, it will be next payday..I will be sure to come back to this thread and correctly change my poser...BTW! Is my poser set right now? I have a heck of a time with some of my pz3's not collecting the clothes and hair..just a pain. I must like abuse! LOL!!! OK...another $400.00! Gads my Hubby loves me! hehehehe ThanX to everyone...I am taking this off the puter and just buying the darn thing, most of the functions are disabled in the trial anyhoo!
Ariana

Welcome to Vue! 

Actually, the best version is Vue 5 Infinite - and the most expensive. There is a feature-by-feature comparison on e-on's web site:
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/?page=chart

Not all versions support Poser.

 There are a few tricks to get the most out of Poser in Vue. You might want to search the forums, the backroom here, Cornucopia 3D (e-on's official user site, where Wabe does extreme help, along with his friends. We know Wabe is secretly a large group - because no single person can do that much) and the registered user's forum on e-on's main site (once you are registered). I also have a growing directory of Vue tutorials and some of my own.

Mostly:

1. What wabe pointed out above.
2. PZ3 can have huge textures. Saves memory and problems if you save your imported Poser figures into native Vue .VOB format AFTER you are sure they look right - since this will break the link back and forth to Poser.
3. Because of how Poser worked in the past, they still do some weird things with materials, like setting textures that would not normally have reflectivity to 100% reflectivity, so they come out white in Vue . So you often need to make a few little edits to some Poser mateials in Vue.

_jc  'Art Head Start' e-book: Learn digital art skills $19.95
'Art Head Start.com Free chapter, Vue tutorials, models, Web Tutorials Directory.

ThanX JC!!! I think I am going to love Vue a lot more than Bryce...I can feel the difference and I like it!
CM

Yep, welcome in Vue.

Shifting from Bryce to Vue (4, at the  time) was for me more than a shock : it was a revelation...

Vue gives me the most creative image power i've ever experienced. So, needless to say, i'm a huge fan. I'm sure you'll love it.

Technical problems - especially with less than 2GB memory, are not exactly rare. And you'll find quite a load of complaints online. But such problems are not 'guaranteed'. Myself and many, many others find Vue 5i very stable and reliable, especially for stills. Good idea to upgrade to the latest patches also - but always wait a few days and check the forums to make sure they are good first.  

Agree with Jim, though I get the occasional crash, a lot more stable & reliable than Poser!

I've never experienced instability with Poser, but then I never use it for more than preparing single figures for import into Vue.

The reflectivity thing is a pain. It mostly happens when a Poser file uses a reflection map (Poser 4 had no other sort of reflectivity). Vue just ignores this and sets the material to 100% mirror. There's no obvious reason other than laziness; Vue supports reflection maps now, and the Poser material could be converted much more accurately with just a little programming effort.

Breaking the link with Poser by converting to .vob is not a good idea if you are ever going to want to use the same figure in a different pose. Vue is meant to be able to update the figure after it's been reposed, but this feature is not terribly well implemented.

Quote - Breaking the link with Poser by converting to .vob is not a good idea if you are ever going to want to use the same figure in a different pose. Vue is meant to be able to update the figure after it's been reposed, but this feature is not terribly well implemented.

This feature works very well here, but you need Vue5Pro Studio ( or at least the "deep access" add-on module for 5 Esprit), or Infinite.

Umm, probably not the right thread to post in (don't want to hijack), but OTOH, it might be useful here too...
I have V5I, P5 & P6. I mostly do outdoor scenes. (Oh, and I have P5/6 set to save w/o any compression/external stuff).

My problem comes when I want to pose a figure (or sometimes several) on a non-flat surface.
My solution to date has been to create the terrain in Vue, try to remember the (approximate) ground-level, pose some figures in P6,  save and see how close I got. Then it's a l-o-o-o-n-g session of going back and forth between Poser & Vue, trying to get the figures' feet to stay on the ground...

Many times I have resorted to hiding the feet with vegetation/rocks/a small wall, whatever, but is there a way of saving the terrain such that it can be imported (with reasonable scale) into Poser, so that I can use it to pose my figures against?

I've tried exporting terrains as .obj files, but the result (when imported into Poser) seem to be a flat plain. Or should I bake to polys 1st, before exporting?

Just want to know, before I spend endless hours experimenting...

Cheers,
Diolma

I tried to 'bake to polygons' a terrain and export to Silo 3D. Vue 5i made some kind of complex 'quilt-like' full tessellation out of the terrein - not a Silo problem, you could see it in the Vue wireframe view. So try a simple experiement first.

Without 'bake to polygons', i get excellent meshes from Vue Terrain Editor (not procedural terrains) in Silo, and can do detailed modeling there and import them back into Vue and texture well.

In this quick test, i exported to Silo and used the Vue polys to extrude a wall - then back into Vue to texture things:

 

I do my modleing in Silo, and never tried this in my Poser 6.

Was your terrain a procedural one (never exportable) or a mesh?

I also have exported Vue terrains with decent results, as obj if I remember well. But it better be 257x257, otherwise the export is way too slow.

Hiding feet is the best solution I think. I made a render that I posted here with a figure walking barefoot on a grassy terrain, and I  used a filter to flatten the terrain a bit. The feet looked barely human, btw!!!

The problem with the Poser update (I have Infinite) is that any change you make to the material zones causes Vue to lose all your material changes when the figure is imported the second time.

So let's say you want your Poser figure to have shinier skin. Edit the material "SkinTorso" and get the effect you want. That's fine. But now you need the same edits to SkinHip, Skin Neck and the rest. Logically, you should copy the edited material to the other parts of the figure. But this causes Vue to destroy all the material zones you copy to. Now when you change the figure in Poser, Vue tries to import it again, can't match the material zones in the pz3 file to what it has locally, and defaults to all the old material settings. Really stupid, that.

If there's one thing e-on should fix in Vue5 before they do anything else, it's this absurd compulsory merging of material zones. It causes so many problems, and would be really easy to fix.

As to posing feet on terrain, the easiest solution is to get it roughly right in Vue and then fix it in postwork. Remember Phantast's Golden Rule: "Never spend an hour trying to fix something in a render that can be fixed in a minute in postwork." Apart for the foot actually intersecting the ground, the key visual clue is shadows. A little bit of editing with the clone brush and your figure's foot now looks like it is firmly on the ground even though it isn't.

When changing materials in Vue, and then changing the pose in Poser, when you're back to Vue, it says that materials have been changed in another program, but had been also changed in Vue, and asks which mats you wan to keep.

Diolma! What a great post to add to this! I think I am learning more in this post about the ins and outs of this combination then I might have in months. I mainly create figures in poser not terrains or "Scenes".  What surprised me most about the tiger is that the pose and the mouth both were "Stiff" and had no expression. I also notice in many pics in the Vue gallery that most "People" in scenes have no expressions and appear flat. Yet a few people have some nice people renders?! So it is possible for them to look good...I think it is a constant "Tweak" that has to be done to get the features to "Stick".  I mainly am looking to Vue for Terrains and Cityscapes! But I am seeing several other options developing in my mind. One thing...I can't afford to get VueI, immediately...should I wait to be able to afford it (*I want it in the box) or is the upgrade after purchase work well? I know I will upgrade, it is a given, but I am anxious to start now! LOL! ThanX again!!!
I planned to call Vue today to ask on the poser issue and their input on it as to weither there are new things in the works as well.
Ariana 

OH Hey! Not to acknowledge the other Posters!!! I am learning oodles here! ThanX!!!!
Ariana

Quote - When changing materials in Vue, and then changing the pose in Poser, when you're back to Vue, it says that materials have been changed in another program, but had been also changed in Vue, and asks which mats you wan to keep.

It shouldn't do that. I think it's meant to do that if you change the materials in Poser after changing them in Vue, but sometimes it gets confused and pops up the question even if you have only changed the pose. If this happens, it runs through a list of 20+ materials asking what you want to do with each, with no "yes to all" option. Very irritating and time-wasting. And poorly thought-out.

No, it's normal that it asks this question. When going back to Poser and resaving the new pose, you also save the Poser materials present in your Poser scene, you can't just save a pose, you save the whole scene, with its poser materials.

Hey all,

was just gonna post about this self same problem, when i saw this thread... I too am having problems importing poser figures in to vue 5 with the facial expressions intact, and was wondering if someone could please go through the whole procedure for me or direct me to the appropriate tutorial.  Absolutely LOVE Vue 5 by the way... agree about the revelation after using bryce for so long.

thanx in advance

K

Oh it is really easy! LOL!!! (*yah, easy for me to say now! LOL!) Ok go into poser...go to edit, then preferences, then to Misc tab, Uncheck the little box that says....
"Use External Binary Morphs" that is all it took and i got a full expression and pose on the tiger!
I got that straight from E-Frontier and Colin!
Hope it helps! I know I was totally lost!!!
Ariana 

Quote - Welcome to Vue! 

Actually, the best version is Vue 5 Infinite - and the most expensive.

This is true. It is also quite a resource hog. I have a computer dedicated to graphics; 3ghz chip, 2 Gb ram, 550 Gb drive space...nothing running on it but the OS. No modem, no browser, all services not having to do with the graphics card shut off.

But if I try to use a volumetric atmosphere and a MINOR ecosystem (no more than 2 sparse vegetations) with one terrain and a ground, I get an out of memory error when trying to render.

One Poser figure but no volumetrics, no GR or GI and simple textures on ground or terrain, one or 2 plants (only 1 if it's a tree) and THAT'S ALL if I want to render it. Otherwise...oom error.

Only way to make a more complex scene is to render elements separately and composite which makes the results ineligible for most of the contests run.

Yeah, I like the IDEA of Vue. I kept buying the updates hoping that these problems will finally have been fixed. I don't think I'll be putting out the money for 6

thanx ariana, i did try it and it worked, except i felt that the models looked a lot 'flatter' than with a normal import, seems a shame to lose that nice full edge don't you think? did you know that if you export a static figure from poser as a 3ds model it will hold its morphs when imported into vue... so if you don't need it to move...!!! you can still keep the different parts by not welding on import and still change textures and stuff.

btw, chinacat, i run vue5 and poser 6 on a machine with a lot less oomph than you and don't have so many problems, could it be your graphics card? i have one that has 128 mb of memory on it and can create quite large scenes and even run some ecosystems. it does crash occasionally tho' but you takes the good with the bad eh?

take care all

Kaz

Quote - No, it's normal that it asks this question. When going back to Poser and resaving the new pose, you also save the Poser materials present in your Poser scene, you can't just save a pose, you save the whole scene, with its poser materials.

It would be terrible if this were the case. If you have changed the materials in Vue, Vue is usually smart enough to know that you want the Vue versions and not the Poser ones (or you would never have changed them). When it does ask, it asks about every darn material and you have to click 20 dialog boxes. If that happened regularly, I would be going crazy!

Suffice it to say that I very seldom see this question, and I am importing Poser figures every day. If you have a different experience, there is something strange happening.

 

Quote - > Quote - No, it's normal that it asks this question. When going back to Poser and resaving the new pose, you also save the Poser materials present in your Poser scene, you can't just save a pose, you save the whole scene, with its poser materials.

It would be terrible if this were the case. If you have changed the materials in Vue, Vue is usually smart enough to know that you want the Vue versions and not the Poser ones (or you would never have changed them). When it does ask, it asks about every darn material and you have to click 20 dialog boxes. If that happened regularly, I would be going crazy!

Suffice it to say that I very seldom see this question, and I am importing Poser figures every day. If you have a different experience, there is something strange happening.

 

Actually, I think Bruno and Phantast are both right.  In Phantast's example, the material list in Vue was collapsed after changing the Skin Torso material and copying it to the hip, abdomen. etc. When reimporting a changed Poser model in this case, there is no prompt to cycle through each of the material zones and ask to keep or discard material changes because the collapsed number of material zones in Vue no longer match the number of  zones from Poser.  Vue has no way of knowing how to match up the original Poser zones in this case with the now modified Vue zones.  The way to workaround this problem is to not make any material changes to your figures in Vue until after you're complete done fine tuning the poses (e..g. you're done cycling back and forth between Poser and Vue to adjust the figure poses)

Well, actually I don't normally get the prompt even without collapsing materials - thank goodness.

Your workaround doesn't work for me. I do comics, and I need the same characters over and over again in successive panels with new poses but the same materials. I do not want to have to re-texture everything after every pose change. I had to do that with Bryce, and it was the prospect of avoiding that labour that was one of the reasons I switched to Vue.

But it is a constant struggle to stop Vue collapsing materials and fouling up the update. Grrr!

The Poser material handling is a pain indeed. But the posing can be done right straight in Poser itself.

I have fallen in love with RDNA Microcosm. It allows me to create the basic landscape where my Poser figures can walk/lie/sit on. The precision posing can be done very well in Poser itself.

One of the tricks I've learned is building the scene in Poser, using nude untextured figures, making sure Poser doesn't crash. Nude and untextured means Poser can easily handle 20 figures, even Millenium 3 ones.

For every scene I create a separate folder. This Poser base scene is saved in the scene folder as "All.pz3" Then I delete all figures except one (adapted a Python script by Ockham), I texture the figure, add clothing and/or har when applicable, and save it as ".pz3" Reload "All.pz3", and finish and save another figure.

Then I fire up Vue 5 Infinite, import one of the .pz3s, fix up the materials, save as .VOB. Import next .pz3, fix up materials, save as .VOB, and so on, and so on.

Vue suffers from memory leaks, so I occasionally quit and restart Vue.

Finally, when all .pz3s have been converted to .vob, I quit and restart Vue and start building the scene using the .vobs. Only then I add native Vue objects such as rocks and plants.

This method works very well for stills. I've created stills with over 20 human figures, plus complex ecosystems, this way. Rendering to screen usually crashes, but rendering to disk works pretty well. I must admit that Vue has a nice piece of hardware to play in, Athlon64x2 4400, 4 GB RAM, nVidia 7800GTX, 2x73 GB WD Raptor 10,000 RPM.

The Poser files can be reused for another scene.

The material issue is a pain. I'm seriously considering writing a set of Python scripts to do some standard fixups of materials.

I hope Vue 6 will have fixed the material import.