Well, I've looked for other threads about this but not found anything. And yet this has always been a problem for me, in Poser 7, Pro, 8, and now Pro 2010.

I just can't get the Grouping Tool to work. I have a prop (a large arena building) which I imported from an OBJ file. It has lots of geometry groups (probably well over 100) but no materials except Preview. I'm trying to assign the dome roof to a new material zone, in order to make it glass.

The roof polygons are not in any existing group, so I create a new group (called Dome) and select the Add tool. Then I click on the roof to select polygons, and nothing happens... it won't select any polygons. I can select a whole area of the roof... still nada. No matter where I click, inside or outside, it just won't select any polygons at all.

It's showing a load of green polygons whenever I hover the mouse over the document window... I'm not sure what that means (maybe they are the existing groups), but I thought I'd mention it. The green polygons do not include the dome roof.

I can add all the polygons to my new group using the Add all button, so the basic functionality is there. But the selection of polygons with the mouse isn't working at all.

Can anyone make any suggestion on how to get this working properly, please? Or tell me what I'm doing wrong?

See if PhilC has any tutorial on it - if it was me, I'd do the grouping in a modeller (I've never had much luck with the grouping tool either tbh)

Whatever the cause of the problem is for Poser, it sounds like you'd be better off adding the grouping in a modelling app due the the size / complexity of the model.

I always found Poser grouping tool quite "twitchy" and unprecise. I usually group geometry in ZBrush or Lightwave, and then import the obj in Poser.

Quote - I always found Poser grouping tool quite "twitchy" and unprecise. I usually group geometry in ZBrush or Lightwave, and then import the obj in Poser.

Precisely my experience as well. I group my geometry in Blender3D... Poser has no issues with it at all.

I too group my things in either Wings3D or UVMapper Pro. It's just, well, easier ;o).

Laurie

Thanks for the feedback everyone. The tool started working correctly (after I restarted Poser for the second time) and then stopped working again half way through what I was doing. Even when it's working, it's very slow.

I have no experience with any modelling tools, although I have Blender (2.49) on my Mac, never used. Oh well.... here goes.

Quote - Thanks for the feedback everyone. The tool started working correctly (after I restarted Poser for the second time) and then stopped working again half way through what I was doing. Even when it's working, it's very slow.

I have no experience with any modelling tools, although I have Blender (2.49) on my Mac, never used. Oh well.... here goes.

I'd be happy to walk you through that, IsaoShi... I have found there are a few tricks to group things correctly. For instance, I make sure I have the mesh in face mode (edit) so I select mesh by faces and not vertices. Then you create a new group and with the mesh you want to add to that group highlighted (selected) click Assign. Then, you set up a new material (New button)... it will be called Material.001 or something like that. F5 and rename the MA material to what you want it calling. This is what will actually show up in Poser's material room, not the group name.
Be sure to go back with F9 and for material click Assign as well.
Hope this sort-of helped a bit...

Thank you, RV. I'm starting from scratch with Blender, and all I have been able to do so far is import the OBJ. As for having the mesh in face mode, selecting faces, creating a new group, assigning polys to it, etc.... well, I'm usually pretty good at finding my way around new applications, but I'm searching the Blender UI now and I'm not seeing how to do any of those things! So first of all I have to Read The Fine Manual (if there is one).
A job for tomorrow, I think... or rather, later today.

Sorry - I assumed... and you know what that means.

One of the first things I do when getting started with a new copy of Blender is change which mouse-button selects. Blender's is set by default to select with the right-mouse button - you can change that in User Preferences. To get to user preferences, you kind-of move your mouse *under the menubar at the top of the Blender screen and drag it down. The Mouse options are in the Views and Controls section.

Something that you will either hate with a passion or love like the next breath you take is the fact that blender is very much a hotkey-fired application. I happen to love that. Whilst most of the hotkey options have a menu option as well, you will find yourself flying once you get the hotkeys memorised.

So, select your mesh (currently in Object Mode and press [TAB]... now you are in Edit mode. [TAB] is a toggle. So is [A]...you select all vertices/lines/faces or none with [A].

If you want to select a group of verts/lines/faces  your mesh, there are a number of ways. [B] lets you box-select. [B] [B] makes the selection tool into a circle. You can click three verts in a row (on a line with each other, connected with the same edge) and [CTRL] [E] and select Edge-Loop Select.

I could go on... but yeah, the fine manual covers a lot of this stuff better than I do.

Here's an awesome Site:
blenderunderground.com/resources/

and there's a thread on the Blender forum on here that is dedicated to Blender resources... they are legion.

To para-quote Cheech from Up In Smoke: "Hope you're not busy for a couple of years..."

I've never had any issues with Poser's grouping tool. What video mode are you using? OpenGL or SREED? Try changing it?

If you use the grouping tool to select polygons I found there are 2 possible reasons why you cannot select them: Either you are too close to the polygons and you have to move the camera back to pick them.
The other reason is that these are backfacing polygons. If you select "reverse group normals" you can now pick them and afterwards you deselect the reverse group normals to restore the grouping.

For the rest I do not have problems with the grouping tool and use it quite often

now that Blender supports polygroups i do all of my grouping in Blender. its 240 times faster and easier.

Quote - > Quote - Thanks for the feedback everyone. The tool started working correctly (after I restarted Poser for the second time) and then stopped working again half way through what I was doing. Even when it's working, it's very slow.

I have no experience with any modelling tools, although I have Blender (2.49) on my Mac, never used. Oh well.... here goes.

I'd be happy to walk you through that, IsaoShi... I have found there are a few tricks to group things correctly. For instance, I make sure I have the mesh in face mode (edit) so I select mesh by faces and not vertices. Then you create a new group and with the mesh you want to add to that group highlighted (selected) click Assign. Then, you set up a new material (New button)... it will be called Material.001 or something like that. F5 and rename the MA material to what you want it calling. This is what will actually show up in Poser's material room, not the group name.
Be sure to go back with F9 and for material click Assign as well.
Hope this sort-of helped a bit...

an interesting approach but you have a lot of materials groups but you only need them for grouping.

if you use polygroups then you dont need extra materials but still get a lot of groups.

Quote - if you use polygroups then you dont need extra materials but still get a lot of groups.

So polygroups means assigning one material zone to a number of different geometry groups, does it? This will be absolutely essential for the model I am working on. There are dozens of groups for the metal framework of the structure, but they will all be the same material.

Thanks ice-boy, I'll look into that. Hopefully it is supported in my Mac version of Blender.

Oh, and thanks to Lost and wimvdb.

When the tool suddenly stops working, moving the camera or using SreeD makes no difference at all. Nor does flipping the normals. Only restarting Poser sometimes gets it working again.

I can't really complain. I have days like that, when the only thing to do is go back to bed and start over.

Any User having this issue, please contact Support with details. Use the Subject Grouping Tool Failure... you can even put it to Attn: John

Thanks, John. I'm using Blender to finish creating the mat zones on this model, but next time it happens in Poser I'll drop you some details.

Oh, I just remembered... only some of the existing geometry groups can be selected using the drop down list in the Grouping Tool. I'll drop you some details of that issue, too. The model I'm using has well over a hundred groups, so maybe there's a limit in the code somewhere.

Quote - Thanks, John. I'm using Blender to finish creating the mat zones on this model, but next time it happens in Poser I'll drop you some details.

Hope I didn't leave anything out in my explanation, IsaoShi. I'm still using version 2.49b because I've got all the hotkeys for pre-2.5 memorised and don't want to learn a whole bunch of new ones... lol

OMGoodness, looking back, I didn't even thank you for your help, RV... I'm sorry. Thank you!

Yes, I was able to follow the steps you described once I'd found my way around the UI. I also went to the site you linked and found a beginners tutorial which I was just about able to follow in spite of it jumping a few steps forward in several places, or the presenter having a strong foreign accent and saying "edge" instead of "H"...

You memorised all the hot-keys? I'm impressed!