When I import an OBJ can Poser6 assign textures based on the MTL file?    For example...the freebie CityBlocks (http://www.axeman3d.com/models7.htm)...has a bunch of textures....and I'm not sure how to assign them other than manually.

ALso...I'm coming from a Das Studio mindset..and by habit convert 3ds/lwo to OBJs.  I realize I dont have to do that with P6...but was wondering if there are any pros/cons to importing from 3ds/lwo.     I read that P6 is best at reading OBJs...so if there's a problem with 3ds/lwo..thats a reason to use OBJs.  But other than that...any differences?

thanks

Wavefront objects are usually best to import with the uvmapping intact, but I have found that most of the older format 3ds objects load in ok with all the maps in place.

Maybe you have a different set of these, but I have never had to either "import" them or apply textures. These are unzipped into the proper directories as either figures or props, I forget which offhand, and are simply loaded into the scene using the Poser Library interface. All textures come in with them when loaded. The one downside is that they are scaled down 12000% so any figures you use will be too large unless you scale the buildings up 12000% or scale the figures down 12000%. This latter gets messy trying to get conforming clothing to go along with the scaling, so it is better (IMHO) to scale the buildings up. This does cause some loss of texture resolution, but these were only ever designed to be backgrounds anyway.

HTH,

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There are some versions that are Poser ready.

Go to free stuff

http://camelot.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez

Select "Poser'

search for "dystopia"

THansk for the help....but I think my question was not clear.  I am not so much interesed in the Dystopia model.  Rather, I want to know if a generic OBJ/MTL, where the MTL refers to bitmaps, can be used by Poser.

Most models I find are 3DS.  So I convet them to OBJ+MTL.  Many of these have no texture, or only a few...so there is no need to worry about Poser importing the MTL. But there are some OBJs out ther that come with many textures.  These are not setup for poser.  So..when I import the OBJ...can Poser use the MTL to assign Textures?

Does this question make sense?

Thanks

your question is a bit confusing as i don't see why you are converting 3ds files into obj. files, 3ds files work fine with poser and will auto-assign textures to the 3ds prop, 3d studio max files don't.also not sure if you mean Mat. files or mtl .files, as mtl .files are poser material room files used for variations like hair colour, blond, black etc. whereas mat files, i'm not sure but i don't think poser reads those. vue reads mat files. if you have in your "material" library some mtl files for a prop, if all you have in your scene is an obj. file, when you click that mtl file in the "material room" it will assign that material to the entire obj prop, as the seperate material zones have not been assigned in an obj file.i think all that is right anyway. where are you converting these files?

To clarify:

MAT poses are files with an extension of .pz2 These are Poser pose files that contain material settings instead of pose settings, a hack I discovered while using Poser 3.

MC6 files are files with an extension of .mc6 These are Poser 6 material collections. They take the place of MAT poses, and can do 99% of what MAT poses do, plus they're fully compatible with, and supported natively by Poser's interface. MT5 (.mt5) files serve a similar purpose, but only contain material settings for a single material zone.

MTL (.mtl) files are material description files, used in conjunction with Wavefront OBJ files. The Wavefront OBJ format does not store actual material settings within itself, but instead relies on external files with the .mtl extension. 3DS files require no such additional files, since any material definitions and texture references are stored within the 3DS file itself.

Vince3 is correct in saying that there is no real reason to convert a 3DS that already exists to OBJ just for the sake of importing into Poser. Occasionally, some 3DS files won't import into Poser, in which case conversion may help. If you created the model yourself in another program, and want to bring it into Poser, then absolutely export it as a Wavefront OBJ.

The answer to your question is:  Yes.  Poser can read .mtl files and load textures.  It just needs to be able to 'find' those textures, within it's various search paths.  For most versions of Poser, this means preferably somewhere in the :Runtime:textures path.

The main drawback to using .3ds files is that that format only supports triangles and not quads or n-gons.  If you are starting with a .3ds file, then you might as well use that, but if you are exporting a mesh from some modelling app, you're better off using .obj format.