peevee opened this issue on Jul 10, 2008 · 11 posts
nomuse posted Wed, 03 September 2008 at 2:09 PM
Yes and no and yes and no.
DAZ recommends "Native" import; that's when Carrara translates the Poser files and format to create a figure or object that is rigged and textured Carrara style. Few would disagree that Carrara rigging is generally superior, and Carrara texturing is potentially superior (there is a less history on developing the quality shaders, but the tools are in place).
As native objects, they are then fully editable, which opens up a great deal more flexibility. However, the Poser universe has come out with a number of helpful (and less-than-helpful) hacks, such as JCMs, texture poses, super-conforming, morph injection, and so forth. Some of these do not translate correctly into Carrara.
(To be completely honest, there is a lot of Poser content out there that fails the "Death Station 9000" test; it works, mostly, but it does not follow all of the usual conventions -- .obj files separate from cr2, for instance, jpeg format texture maps, no spaces in file names, etc. What you can usually get away with in an actual Poser version, you can't always get away with in Carrara.)
The other major mode is by using the plug-in called "Transporter." "Transporter" creates a live link between a Poser scene -- (meaning, you have to not just have Poser, you have to use Poser to set up the figures et al). It takes more RAM, requires Poser, the imported objects are much less editable -- but it gets more things right.
In particular, Transposer is still the best way to get Dynamic Cloth into a Carrara scene. (Again, a note; yes, you can export out a cloth sim as an object, or even as a set of morphs. You can recreate the cloth sim in Carrara with Carrara native tools. Some people find just keeping the live link to the original cloth sim more flexible, however.)
The other downside to Transposer is a spotty support (why I said "yes, no, yes, no..." above.) It may or may not be installed in your Carrara version, may or may not be compatible, free, and may or may not be compatible with your current version of Poser. It isn't actually that complex a question, but I haven't the heart to track down all the variations myself. All I know is I've got it and it works good for me. (But on the gripping hand, I haven't had that much trouble with Native mode either.)