Hello,  am interested in using carrara to create morph targets for poser clothing and maybe characters. Does any one know if you loose the over all shape and/or quality of the imported obj when converting the obj to the vertex modeler? Or is there something i can do before converting the obj that will help preserve its original shape. Ive noticed when i convert obj's sometimes it tweaks the overall shape of the obj, even with surface fidelity cranked up.  Thanks for any input or advice anyone has..

I've had no distortion trouble with importing OBJs into Carrara and editing them in the Vertex modeler.  There are a few strange things, of course:

1:  When exporting a model from Poser as an OBJ, for some reason, I have to select the figure, select the body part (let's say it's the head), and then I have to "step out of Poser" (briefly open another -- ANY other -- program) and then back into Poser before I'm able to select the option that allows the head to be exported for a morph target.  I don't know if this is a Poser bug or a "Dex's computer" problem, but whatever the case is, it took me forever to figure this one out.

2:  After importing the model into Carrara (being sure to tick the make a single mesh for morph targets box), when opening the head in the vertex modeler, it's incredibly tiny.  Yes, you can zoom in, and that's fine, but the dolly/track controls become a bit unwieldy.  My understanding is that Poser's geometry reads as incredibly tiny in most other applications.  I remember seeing some third party product that would allow you to enlarge the geometry and then reduce it for ease of work.  Might be worth looking into.

3:  When exporting from Carrara, be sure to tick the "scale in local coordinates" (or something similar -- I'm going from memory here -- don't have Carrara or Poser in front of me right now).  Otherwise, your morph targets will get really wonky.

Hope that's helpful.

Have fun!

:D

Quote - I've had no distortion trouble with importing OBJs into Carrara and editing them in the Vertex modeler.  There are a few strange things, of course:

1:  When exporting a model from Poser as an OBJ, for some reason, I have to select the figure, select the body part (let's say it's the head), and then I have to "step out of Poser" (briefly open another -- ANY other -- program) and then back into Poser before I'm able to select the option that allows the head to be exported for a morph target.  I don't know if this is a Poser bug or a "Dex's computer" problem, but whatever the case is, it took me forever to figure this one out.

lol.. i think that be a dex bug, we all got stuff like that, but i havnt encountered that yet with carrara....... yet

ya the scaling when exporting from poser is microscopic isnt it.. i just scale it by 1000% then when im done i rescale it by .001 %. but just seems i loose some of the shape when i convert to vertext room..   wondering is i shouldnt be smoothing polygons when importing or should lower fidelity or something..  thanks for the input

Couple things... First, scaling by 1000x on the way in, and 1/1000 before exporting, works. There are other tricks to the settings, too -- which can be a little confusing with the unhelpful button labels. Going from memory, it is something like switch off "center in workspace," switch on the "inhibit scale change" (or whatever that checkbox is called), select "vertex primitive" and go on to use "one object per group" and "one polymesh for materials." The last doesn't seem to do anything, but... When the object arrives in Carrara and you've scaled it to a decent working size, hit "Smooth all" to take out the creases Carrara adds (they make it harder to see your morphs.) After that, you MUST do all of your work in the Vertex Modeler. Even there, many of the tools will change the number and/or order of the vertices. Particularly, operations like deformers or boning; they will force you to apply "Convert deformed object to mesh" and that new mesh will NOT resemble the original in vertex order, number, or even grouping (all grouping is destroyed). It should go without saying that as you model your new morph, you can not add, subtract, or weld a single vertice. Which also means mirroring is out, at least by duplication and welding. Your best tools are basically soft selection and manipulator. Lastly. For some reason almost every time I do this (regardless of settings, it seems), the new object imports into Poser correctly scaled and lined up on every axis -- except for the Y axis, where it is maybe a sixth of a Poser unit too high. Because of that, most of my Poser-Carrara-Poser workflow involves re-importing the mesh to Poser after working on it, going into wireframe view and doing a final tweak (and check) of it's position relative to the original. Hope this helps.

To make morphs in poser objects I do things a little differently than what I've read here.

First I open Carrara and create a new, empty document. Then I import the poser object with Auto-Position unchecked, Disable-Auto scaling checked, Vertex Primatives checked/ Create a Single Polymesh, and Create Only One Object checked.

I work the object in the vertex room in it's native scale. It takes a bit of getting used to but I no longer find the controls unwieldly or cumbersome at that scale and it saves a LOT of trouble on the other end. I do select the whole object an smooth it to get rid of the hard edges.

I make my morph changes using soft select. Yeas it works very well at poser's native scale usuallt set between 0.015 and 0.050.

I then EXPORT the object renamed to blahblah001.obj or whatever.

If I'm just making adjustments to the mesh I rename the original object file and then rename the new object to the original obj's name, (ALWAYS retain the original just in case...).

If I'm makeing a morph, I then use a routine that let's me install the entier morph without breaking it into groups. The one I routinely use is "ADDMORPH" found in Dimension3D's Poser tool pack found in the marketplace here. IT is simple and works VERY WELL!

I have never noticed any distortion to the mesh between Carrara and Poser using these techniques and I have used it to make very fine detaled changes to the meshes to correct poke thru etc.

Most of the time, using these techniques, if I do see any problem it comes about because the object was shifted slightly in Poser before exporting. I have noticed that if a clothing object is Conformed, then exported (even if unconformed first) it's postion make be slightly off compared to an object before conforming.

hope this helps

mike

Thanks for looking up the correct control names. Yup -- that's almost exactly what I am doing (with the exception of ADDMORPH -- do you think that could be made to work on a Mac?) I didn't go into the whole "zero object" thing above. Simply put, Poser introduces several shifts in position and scale and rotation when a library figure is added to an empty scene (it also produces more changes when a figure is conformed). Since morphs (and for that matter, clothing figures) need to be aligned to the base state of the obj, there are two ways of making sure that is what you are bringing into your modeling/morphing application. The first, and simplest, is to import directly from the modeling application; point it at Poser's "Geometries" folder inside the "Runtime" folder, and navigate to the actual base object. (As an alternative workflow, drag a copy of the obj into your work window then import from there.) The second, and more complex, is to take out all these little shifts. Load figure from library. Turn off all IK. Select a random body part. Open the joint editor, and hit "Zero figure." Close the joint editor, and look at "BODY" and "hip" groups to make sure all translations are set to zero. Since Poser does not display past I think the fourth significant figure, click on the dial itself and enter a "zero" to be sure. Now, for some figures there will be an additional scaling in some body parts. Walk through each part and make sure scale, taper, morph dials, and everything else is actually zero. For extra points save this to library as a zero'd figure. Please note, however, that Poser will switch on the IK again when you reload it! And, as long as we are this far, if you are doing morphs then do NOT hit the "as morph target" button. Do make sure "include body part names" is checked, as well as "weld body parts." If this is something you are altering (as opposed to a morph target) then also hit "include existing groups."

nomuse,

Thanks for that info on Poser's quirks! It's been filed and will be put to good use I assure you

Sorry but  you'd have to talk to Dimension3D about having his Poser related progams converted to Mac.. However, if he did/does do it, one other file he has that I've made a LOT of use of is "IK" where the Poser IK can be shut off in the psoer figures or even removed permanently!

mike

thanks guy,,.. thats some good info. helps,

but what im also nevrous about is sometimes when converting obj's to vertex, carrara wants to create new vertices due to something not normal or something (sorry, im on laptop now cant actually look up what it says, will do tomorrow) Im just hoping hat doesnt screw up the polygon count