Some time ago there was a tutorial (Dr. Geep) showing how to smooth the sharp edges of a standard square object by exporting it as a wavefront obj. and reimporting it with weld identical vertices checked.
I can't get this to work in Poser6. Any ideas? Thanks. Ken

I think the smoothing was basically only for how light reflects off of  the object, if I understood the Geep properly. His tuts sometimes throw me because they seem a bit busy and scattered, albeit very informative. I'm probably wrong though.

Sounds like that was meant to weld the verts that were split to keep the edges hard.  Was a P4 thing.  I don't think P6 cares about that.

Anim8or is free.  Make a cube (double-click to set the parameters - leave divisions at 1).  Go to Build--Convert to mesh.  Then Build--Convert to subdivided.  Now convert back to mesh, and save as OBJ through the Objects menu.  Should have nicely rounded edges.

John

"Some time ago there was a tutorial (Dr. Geep) showing how to smooth the sharp edges of a standard square object by exporting it as a wavefront obj. and reimporting it with weld identical vertices checked.
I can't get this to work in Poser6. Any ideas? Thanks. Ken"

It won't work on a square. A square (not the high-res one, the normal single-sided square) is a plane. It has 4 vertices, one at each corner. They can't be smoothed.

What can be (somewhat) smoothed is the cube/box.
The box that Poser supplies is made up of 6 squares, one for each side.
Which means that Poser treats the box as six separate (square) objects. Since it can't "smooth" a square, it can't smooth the box.
This box has 24 vertices. 3 at each corner. (6 sides each with 4 corners, 6 x 4 = 24)
The corners of each side meet exactly. (So there are 3 vertex entries in the mesh data for each corner which have identcal values. Each of those entries is associated with a different side of the box).

By exporting/importing (with "weld identical vertices" checked), those 6 corners with 3 verts each get welded into a new object which has 1 vertex at each corner. Each vertex is shared between the 3 adjoining faces. Now Poser only has a single object, with a total of 8 vertices.

Since the faces are now "joined together", Poser can calculate the angle between one face and another. And can "adjust" it when rendering so as to give the appearance of a smoother join.

You may need to adjust the "smoothing" value for the imported box, either in the rendering options, or in the properties dialogue for the box for the effect to be seen...

I really hope this helps, 'cos it has just scrambled my brain trying to explain it in words...:-))

Cheers,
Diolma

How bad do you want to do this?  If you need to I can give you a work around in Anim8or.  Simple solution.....free program.

Quote - Some time ago there was a tutorial (Dr. Geep) showing how to smooth the sharp edges of a standard square object by exporting it as a wavefront obj. and reimporting it with weld identical vertices checked.
I can't get this to work in Poser6. Any ideas? Thanks. Ken

yes easy. Do the Geep tute then on the object Properties Panel (the other tab on the dials menu) change the Smoothing Angle : 0 = no Smoothing (Object Appears Facted) to 100= Heavy Smoothing. note : Use this with smoothing on render turned off - that overrides any smoothing settings per object.

ack, i battle all day trying to get sharp objects to stay sharp in poser and here is someone trying to get them puffy :)

weld vertices works both in poser import and also with the uvmapper command. you can pick up a free version of uvmapper, IMO it is a better solution since when you want to sharpen up an object again you can also use it to split the vertices -- which you cant do in poser.

what are you trying to smooth? now im curious :)

Quote - Sounds like that was meant to weld the verts that were split to keep the edges hard.  Was a P4 thing.  I don't think P6 cares about that.

unfortunately it is still an issue in both P5 and P6. i can usually get by with gratuitous use of the bevel/chamfer tool and get a halfway decent shape which doesnt require me to split vertices, but heaven forbid someone turn on 'smooth polygons' in the render settings window -- everything ends up looking like a stay puft marshmallow :(

I did misspeak. I was of course referring to rounding the edges of a box. I found that in Poser6 this can be done, to some extent, if you change the crease angle to 100% under Smooth polygons in the objects properties tab, after reimporting the box with the vertices welded. Somehow, when applying this to furniture, as Dr. Geep did in the tutorial, it dosn't work quite as well as in his tutorial, which might have applied to Poser4. He has an interesting web site at DrGeep.com. I do work with Anim8or but I'm not that interested in doing it perfectly. Actually, I'm getting a headache from all this and wonder what the hell all of us did before Poser came along... watch the depressing news (the Bush follies!).
Thanks to all of you for your suggestions.