Greetings! finally digging into the vertex modeler (Carrara  4) and combining that with UVMapper. I see where i can name selections in the vertex modeler. It would be really handy to be able to call those groups when exported to an .obj file, and brought into UVMapper. Is there anyway to do this, or am I SOL?

gray, unfortunately you can't group in Carrara and imprt it directly int UVMapper, the work around I use is to assign the groups I want as shading domains which UVMapper does recognize. You can use "select by material" in UVMapper to select the shading domain then assign it to the group name you want.

One thing to remember. Carrara doesn;t recognize UVMapper groups, unless you import it with create one object per Group checked on, and this will break your model into multiple parts creating duplicate vetices.

mike

I admit to being confused. If you make a selection of polygons in the VM and select "name polygon group" from the menu you will create a "g" line in your exported object file; the same line used for Poser groups, and recognized by UVmapper as well. As of Carrara 5,if you take a selection and give it a new material domain name, you create a standard "usemtl" line that also shows up in both Poser and UVmapper as a "material." The only problem I am aware of is a persistent bug in Carrara's VM that will delete those group names (of a Carrara-created or imported mesh), when certain modeling or selection steps are performed.

nomuse,
 
It's very possible I'm the one confused. Or just a victim of those modeling/selections steps you mention, but everytime I import/export to/from Carrara I loose any grouping, UVMapper or Poser. However I almost always (really always but you never know) retain the shading domains/material groups. So using the materials makes it a piece of cake to select and convert them to groups either in UVMapper Pro or in Poser itself...

BTW have you documented which Selection/Modeling steps cause the Grouping/Naming to be deleted? Has this infromation been passed on to DAZ? I'd appriciate any info on this as I just assumed the groups were routinely deleted.

mike

Stuff I'm sure deletes groups; Using the "loop" selection tool. Deleting any polygons that are part of a named polygon group. Stuff I'm not so sure about: Using "triangulate n-gons," "de-triangulate," or any of the other similar menu options. Collapsing subdivisions does not harm groups, nor does triangulating an individual polygon seem to. (Oh...the triangulate command will trash a UVmap 100 percent of the time...) I'm not sure at what stage you are losing the grouping. When I've been trying to track down problems I have gotten into habit of opening the .obj files in a text editor and searching for "g" lines. That reveals pretty quickly if the groups are still there -- and if I got the wrong options to give them the correct names. (In exporting from Poser, several options will create strange group names like "figure1_lThigh:2" instead of "lThigh.") I group the vast majority of my models within Carrara, and I frequently open them in the freeware version of UV Mapper to fix parts of the mapping Carrara does badly.

Nomuse,

That's some interesting info. While I do use the loop selection tool occationally I rarely triangulate. I prefer Quads.

Recntly I been working more and more in Carrara's native uv mapping tools (I hope to see them upgraded to something in line with Hex's in C6), mostly because I've been seeing an odd affect from UVMapper Pro. For some reaon I haven;t isolated yet going between Carrara and Uvmapper my mapping becomes scrambled (see attached screen cap) and for many items I depended on UVMapper for grouping (for most Poser clothing I use AutoGroup edit but with none clothing items that's not a great option. So I've been using the material/Poser grouping tool... It's nice to know there is another option.

mike

I'm not sure what happens to a map importing it into UV Mapper. My experience with the free version is it is extremely friendly and doesn't muck with a properly-made map. On the other hand, there are several things Carrara does that are not friendly towards maps. There are a lot of rough edges in how the built-in UV mapping functions work. For one example, if a map that has a contiguous mesh split out into several non-contiguous UV regions will sometimes, brought into Carrara, try to re-weld itself across those seams. For another example, Carrara's own cylinder mapping is actually incorrect; it wraps one polygon behind the rest of the mesh instead of splitting at the seam. It also has a nasty habit of developing disconnected or broken points that can, if messed with, cause Carrara itself to crash. However, in general, you should be able to switch back and forth between those applications without having your maps scrambled. But then, my experience is with Carrara, the freeware UV Mapper, and Poser. Between those I can generally maintain the maps.

thanks guys for the interesting comments. I've been experimenting with the shading domains names and going from there; I may have viewable results soon.

Just to add another note to this discussion. After nomuse's posts I went back and tried using the Naming function in the vertex room some more. This WOULD actually be a very useful feature except for the fact that virtuall every action I took that modified the mesh of the object erased the name groups. Adding points, removing points, thickness, etc. erased the names. Moving the points by selecting either individual points or using the marquee tool seemed to retain the names but as nomuse said the lasso tool erased them. 

Also if an object is brought into Carrara that had the mesh seprated in UVMapper or any other program (as in UVM's planar function with "split by orientation" active) can cause problems as Carrara re connects the vertices at the "split" and even shifts them around causing some pretty sever map stretching across the area of the split, the only way to avoid this seems to be to physically split the object into 2 elements.

After saying all of this I still ahve to say that the most reliable method is still to use the Materials or Shading Domains to differentiate the groups and make them selectable in UVMapper and/or Poser. 

mike

Please join me in the good fight. I've been trying to get these properly logged as a bug for nearly three years. I consider it now counter-productive for me to post further in the bug log.

nomuse,

I made mention of this and a couple of other improvements on the DAZ wishlist for C6. Is there someplace else it should be listed? I haven;t kept up on bug lists since I had one acknowledged by Eovia concerning dragging the working box and drawing planes, which was never addressed. Right after that DAZ bought the program and I kind of stopped asking...

mike

Official bug submissions is at http://forum.daz3d.com/bugs/view_all_bug_page.php?page_number=1 Highest on my list is of course the vanishing group names (not correctly listed in the bug report; the fact that deleting a named group deletes the group names was, itself, deleted from the bug list). I first reported this shortly after getting Carrara 4.0 -- I may have reported it even earlier, as it was an occasional problem in Carrara 3.0 UV maps restoring to default sphere after tesselation reported and confirmed. UV maps welding across splits reported, file submitted, still marked (as of three months) as "awaiting feedback." Incorrect mapping on cylinder (the wrapped poly across the seam) reported, file and diagrams both submitted, still marked as of six months or so as "awaiting feedback." Crashing in the UV mapper (the dreaded "nil pointer error") reported, marked as "awaiting feedback" (I haven't managed a simple file that shows this problem and nothing else). Some of these may have had movement since I last looked (and my dates are guesswork) but I'm finding it increasingly depressing to visit that bug log.

I can confirm that all of those bugs are still there and that the best workaround is to use the shader names and export to UVMapper and after you import do not touch it with the vertex modeler again.  Otherwise you get any number of nasty things from crashes to ugly mapping and some weird changes to mapping.  Aside from this really frustrating issue, I really like Carrara and the way it handles many workflow issues.  I just wish they would wrip out the UV Editor portion of the Vertex modeler and create a new UV Modeler totally separate from the Vertex modeler.  It has other issues like when you inadvertantly leave a point that is not connected to the mesh.  Eventually this little lone point corrupts everything resulting in the big crash.  It took me forever to figure out this was what was causing it to crash so often.  Now I am very carefull about deleting things.

I will not be upgrading if the first users report these same problems.  I have Lightwave 9.2 and am migrating my work to that.  It does require a couple of mental gymnastics for me to use it versus Carrara but so did ZBrush.

Dan

Dan

Well I've had Silo for sometime now, received it as a gift for some work I did for a friend, and I've gottten the latest beta of 2.0. I must say originally I was disappointed at the length of time it's taken for them to beta test 2.0 but then again maybe this just shows how much they care for their software. Silo 2.0 has an impressive array of modelling tools that work pretty well and can be imported into any number of renderers including Carrara Pro 5. The new pelt mapping style UV mapping capabilities are very impressive, much like what Hex offers, without some of the headaches. 

The biggest plus, for me, of Carrara over Silo is the scaling issue whcih isn;t all that big a thing with a simple freebie. I rarely import Poser content for USE in Carrara, so that's not an issue I worry about and I'm not sure how this will be carried (if at all) into version 6 to be honest.

Since I do very little rendering in Carrara these days, with modelling/ rigging Poser content taking up so much of my time it would be difficult to justify the out lay of money for the upgrade (unless it is REALLY cheap). Of course if these issues are fixed and the UV mapping brought up to someting near the normal found in most other programs today, Carrara would be my first choice as I'm very comfortable with the interface.

I've been with this program since version 1 (actually started with RayDream back in the day!) and have always be a supporter, so I feel really sad to say such a thing but we have to be practical too. There are just so many good alternatives in the 3D market and the pricing is becoming less of an issue, that its just not sible to stick with a program that doesn;t do what you need or has so many bugs, just ro loyalty to aname.

mike

I think there's several of us in the same boat, and much as I hate to take the role of albatross, work on Carrara is being driven by market forces. To those of us building content in Carrara, particularly Poser content, it is a bare-bones modeling engine that is easy to get used to and easy to work in. The main thing we want out of an upgrade is for several annoying bugs to go away. From the point of view of the potential new user, and very possibly the bulk of the Carrara users, what will attract them to Carrara 6 is the stuff that gets shown off at Sigraph. And there are a lot more of them then there are of us. Stomping bugs does not have the same financial incentive. The one thing that I'm certain of is I won't be suckered into sending money for another pre-release. I'm waiting until I can read the detailed list of what was done and not done before I even think of purchasing another Carrara.