Hi,
Anyone know a good tut that will help me learn how to import a MAX model and apply textures?

I got Poser 8 earlier today, and I've figured out the rest of the basics, but I'm stumped on how to get textures onto my spaceship models ...!

Thanks in advance!

Are you going into the material room and trying?

Just a thought.

Good luck.

At the very least, this response will take your message back up to the top of the board.  LOL.

:)

Yeah thanks for the bump. Just not wrapping my head around how to get materials onto model surfaces. Might be old age finally kicking in...

It'll come to ya'.

Go for a walk, get some air.  And maybe by then a heavy hitter will show up and make
sense of it in a snap too.

Alright.  Good luck.

The obj needs to have material zones for you to apply textures to it, or more to the point for Poser to recognize that it can accept materials.
Import your obj into Poser (File:Import), enter into the Material Room, with the eyedropper selected can you click on the obj anywhere and a material appears in the panel?
Can you click on material along top of panel and see a list of materials?

If I am talking greek to you just open Poser with a standard Poser figure and do the same thing, you'll see materials appear that you can tweak and/or change.

How are you importing your obj into Poser, wavefront obj or 3ds max?

The obj should also be uv mapped for image maps and some of the nodes.   Best to do the material zones in max too.

 @darkedge, thanks, i'll click around based on those notes. I'm importing max files.

@markschum - i understand all the words you used but not in that order :-)   I'm not a modeler. I just bought Poser today :-)

Right. So you don't actually have Max? (not being a modeler it would be a little crazy to have such an expensive program just sitting there L) but rather some MAX models you want to use in Poser?

You can't import .max files to Poser. Poser doesn't know what to do with that format. You CAN however import both 3DS (which technically is a Max format, too) and .obj. Poser prefers .obj to .3ds but will import both.

Which kind is your spaceships?

Often, when you download space ship models as .obj's there's a texture file or two included (I know I have some nice Star Trek meshes that comes like that) and in that case it's fairly easy to go into the material room, use the eyedropper to select the ship's surface, and add the texture map. If you stay at the Basic Material Room at first, it's very straightforward. No weird nodes or anything.

But tell us more first: Which mesh is it and did it come with any textures in the zip? 

@TrekkieGrrrl
Right. I tried 3DMax version ...uh...4? in 1997 and felt part of my cerebellum pop.  Haven't touched a 3D program until now :-)

Yes, I imported a model that I purchased here at Renderosity and it comes up un-textured.

My steps:
Import model (OBJ). Click materials tab.

Main camera to the left, materials window with simple/advanced tabs in the middle and a texture map loaded, library on the right.

On main view: Click a portion of the model with the eyedropper. Nothing happens.
As an experiment:
Move to library view, click materials > Poser 8 > Procedurals > Brick and tile > Brick 1

Double click Brick 1.

Poser loads the material into "Diffuse Color" block, but model stays grey. Clicking eyedropper does nothing. Clicking the materials brings a "texture manager" pop.

Everyone reading this is going, "dude, it's so easy, what's the prob? " aren't you :-)

So the learning challenges today are:

1. swapping one texture on a pre-built imported model and
2. adding a background texture (I have the JPG)

If you're interested, you'll eventually see some of my work over here:
www.battleclinic.com