A recurring topic is the relationship between Poser Native Units and real-world units.  This varies , from the  Poser 1 and Post-Poser 5 'Official' 103.2 inches to the Poser 4 and DAZ 96 Inches to Dr. Geep's 100 inches, and is well-summarized in English Bob's excellent dissertation:

www.morphography.uk.vu/scaleobj.html

I was recently  pondering this, and happened across a shipping term, TEU, short for 'Twenty-ft. Equivalent Unit' which is the size of a 20 foot shipping container. This is used for defining the capacity of intermodal container cargo ships, which are very important to the economy of the West Coast, which is also the nexus of the US Software industry. 

The size of a TEU is 20 ft long, by 8 ft wide, by 8.6 ft. tall; 8.6 feet is 103.2 inches, the size of a Poser Native Unit....

EDIT-I should note that this dimension is very important in determining the height of loaded container ships to ensure adequate clearance under bridges and other port structures.

I'm listening ...
*(with no apologies to Frasier Crane, ha ha)

so if i want to make a shipping sontainer in Poser
what the hell scale or size do i make it?

I wonder if the 8.6 foot height is something like the standard railway track width, which originated as the width of Roman chariot wheel tracks. I know that the Romans didn't have trains or container ships, but maybe someone historical built something else that was 8.6 feet high.

(Is that about 2.5 meters? In the 35 years since Canada went metric I've pretty much lost my Imperial sense of distance.)

it was a Roman measurement for roadways, which were two asses (the animals, smart guys) abreast. Over the millenia, it's stuck as a measurement.
There's some long, convoluted explanation that starts with the donkey and ends up with the Space Shuttle, but I don't remember all the parts...;)

Probably as good an explanation as any other.   103.2 inches doesn't seem
to have any other real world connection, and certainly doesn't come out even
in metric.

The old 96 made sense in terms of house or stage-set construction.
(8 x 4 plywood and drywall)

 Huh...?

If you take 103.2 inches and multiply by 2.54  you get 262 centimeters.

If you take 103.2 inches and multiply by 2.54 squared (6.4516) you get 666 centimeters !

The number of the beast !

Ahhh, that makes perfect sense! :lol:

Quote - I wonder if the 8.6 foot height is something like the standard railway track width, which originated as the width of Roman chariot wheel tracks.

Sorry no. www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp that's somewhat of a urban myth.

Lucifer cares not a whit for the width of human conveyances !

Bwahahaaaa !

This is a case where somebody from SM should just give the answer. The Poser team hasn't changed that much, and I'm sure that Uli or Steve or Stefan knows the reason for the 103.2 (actually 103.200005) or personally knows who knows.

 If we convert the distance into time units,  days,  weeks,  or perhaps even months..  It could be when we get the next SR for P8..  But then again,   perhaps not..!

The answer is so obvious. Way back when, they measured from the top of Steve's mohawk when gelled up and spiked to the ground and it was 103.2000005 inches, and that became 1 PNU :thumbupboth:

Quote - This is a case where somebody from SM should just give the answer.

The 1 PNU = 103.2" scale gives the Poser 1 man the same height as the US/UK average male, so I'd be interested to know if that factor was in there from the very beginning.

My cat just said ...
"Purrfeck!"

Quote - English Bob's excellent dissertation: www.morphography.uk.vu/scaleobj.html

Purely by chance, I recently updated this, because it's now linked from my Construction Props download. So if you were wondering if it had changed since you last read it, you're right - and thanks for the shout-out. I'm glad somebody is reading this stuff...

I find the "actual scale" Poser items import with to be highly unreliable, as most people just eyeball things anyway.

I also want Poser humans with realistic real world proportions.

So...
Whenever I model something, I use blueprints to get the shape right.
Whenever I resculpt a figure, I use growth charts and reference photos to get the proportions right.
And whenever I use a model someone else made, I first look up it's real world size and then rescale it in Poser accordingly.

To do this with the least amount of work, I switched Poser to METRIC.
Then I made a metric cube that's 1 x 1 x 1 meters in size.
Just by scaling and moving this prop I can now directly read distances from the Poser scale/trans dials without any conversion.

If I scale the prop along the y-axis to 175%, it is then 175cm or 1,75m tall.
If I move it by 100% along x-trans, it moves 100cm or 1m in Poser space-
If I scale it down to 10% overall, it's then 10 X 10 X 10 cm in size.

It really couldn't be easier.

So, old scale, new scale...

All what matters is that all props and figures used in a render have the SAME scale.

And the only way to make sure of that is to measure and re-scale everything you use, before you use it.

And the easiest way to do this is to...

GO METRIC !

Virtual "Aneta" is scaled that she matches the cube scaled up to 165%.

So, in my "Private Poserverse", virtual Aneta is now as tall as "real" Aneta and I can be sure that all proportions are correct.

ha,
I've just read this thread for the 1st time and funny thing is... I'm just at the moment on the container vessel at the Hong Kong roads (and unfortunately will stay on board for one month more:(

I scaled the mesh using my metric cube and now both girl and car are perfectly "in scale".

... Or you could just ...

GO Pnu !

I find the "actual scale" Poser items import with to be highly unreliable, as most people just eyeball things anyway.

I also want Poser humans with realistic real world proportions.

So...
Whenever I model something, I use blueprints to get the shape right.
Whenever I resculpt a figure, I use growth charts and reference photos to get the proportions right.
And whenever I use a model someone else made, I first look up it's real world size and then rescale it in Poser accordingly.

To do this with the least amount of work, I switched Poser to Poser native units.
Then I made a Pnu cube that's 1 x 1 x 1 Pnu (100") in size.
Just by scaling and moving this prop I can now directly read distances from the Poser scale/trans dials without any conversion.

If I scale the prop along the y-axis to 175%, it is then 175" or ~14.58'  tall.
If I move it by 100% along x-trans, it moves 100" or 8' 4" in Poser space-
If I scale it down to 10% overall, it's then 10" x 10" x 10"  in size.

It really couldn't be easier.

So, old scale, new scale...

All what matters is that all props and figures used in a render have the SAME scale.

And the only way to make sure of that is to measure and re-scale everything you use, before you use it.

And the easiest way to do this is to...

GO Pnu  !
... and DGS.

(don't cha just love "cut 'n paste") :lol:* Thanks Joe. :biggrin:

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

not so. if you create a 1x1x1m cube in any modeler and import it with scaling off on import, it'll look huge... but it's still 1x1x1m.

yup. it's not changed. it's still proper OBJ format, 1x1x1m scale.

export it, with just plain export,  and it'll register in your modeler when you bring it back in as 1x1x1m.

it's poser CONTENT that's tiny now. Poser itself can handle real world scaling. I'm not sure when it was that happened tho.

the image shows the Cube I now use for my work. I know that in poser, trueSpace, Wings, Sketchup, etc, that cube is 1x1x1m (realworld/multimodeler scale) exactly.

now. thanks to Joe, I can use it even more laughs I export a Poser 1x1x1m cube at Poser scale.. I have my known Reg Cube as shown.. sooo

I attach the Regcube to the model I want to import to poser. import my PoserScale1x1x1m cube.  I then scale my attached Regcube to match the Poserscale cube.... and bingo.

oh that will work nicely!

The point is that OBJ doesn't have a set scale - it just uses units, without specifying how long a unit is. Your 1m cube probably came from modo or some other application that uses 1 OBJ (and Poser) unit = 1m, if you'd used Hexagon (base unit 1cm as I recall - as I think it is in 3DS Max) the cube would have been even larger. That's one of the reasons that the DAZ Studio OBJ importer/exporter has multiple presets - so that it can use the right conversion factor from the source application's scale to its own 1 unit = 1 cm.

...no., I checked.
it's 1 Meter.
thank you for playing.

Quote - ...no., I checked. it's 1 Meter.

Citation needed, as they say on Wikipedia. None of the OBJ file specs I can find mention a scale, but most of them are apparently copied from the same source. Yet again the Internet fails to be the sum total of human knowledge...

But seriously, I'd like to know. If most modellers export a 1 metre cube as being 1 OBJ unit on a side, then I can update my dissertation with that information. I don't have access to most modellers - at least not the ones which are expensive enough to work in real-world units. :)

well when you take the same OBJ into 4 different modeling apps and they all read it as 1 meter, I think its safe to say it's 1 meter for the purpose of defining 1 meter for inter-app usage, don't you? ;)

since a mesh will then size to an expected ratio in each app. correct?

except when the said file is brought into Poser - with scaling off so it maintains the data unaltered - and it scales as shown.

why the emphasis on unaltered? since with out that, you do get random results as anyone bringing in a multi part model knows so well...

Quote - well when you take the same OBJ into 4 different modeling apps and they all read it as 1 meter, I think its safe to say it's 1 meter for the purpose of defining 1 meter for inter-app usage, don't you? ;)

It does seem that 1 metre is the norm, in that case, thanks. Poser isn't as far out from the rest of the modelling universe as I'd thought. Here I was thinking it was an order of magnitude off, or worse.

Which four apps? 1 unit  =1 metre is common, so it may just be that the four you used used that.

Attached Link: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/public/unitbox.zip

The attached link is a simple cube in OBJ format, 1 unit per side. If you have a modeller which can read real-world units, import the file without scaling and see what size it appears to be.

in Max 2011, it comes in at 1m.  My units are set to 1unit = 1 meter though.  Will fiddle with the settings and see if it changes.
Reset the system units to feet and inches and it comes in at 1 foot.

Stewer (and others) said OBJ has no official units, nor even an established assumption that is common across apps. It seems clear that the scale for import/export is typically user-defined for any given app.

But not Poser.

Quote - Stewer (and others) said OBJ has no official units, nor even an established assumption that is common across apps. It seems clear that the scale for import/export is typically user-defined for any given app.

But not Poser.

... unless one UNchecks the "Percent of standard figure size" option when importing, no?!

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

trueSpace 4.3 - 1m or 3.28ft
trueSpace 7.6 - 1m or 3.28ft

no change whatever the world is set to.

Quote - > Quote - Stewer (and others) said OBJ has no official units, nor even an established assumption that is common across apps. It seems clear that the scale for import/export is typically user-defined for any given app.

But not Poser.

... unless one UNchecks the "Percent of standard figure size" option when importing, no?!

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Are you trying to be obtuse? Of course I know that, but unless you read all this dreck we've been talking about, you still have no idea what size that is. Yes you can make it bigger or smaller, but the "standard figure size" is not a documented size, and has nothing to do with a meter or a foot or an inch.

And if you UNcheck that option as you put it, then you do not have a user-defined scaling ability in Poser, which is exactly what I said.

Ok.

cheers,
dr geep <---------------------- never learned how to be "obtuse." ... ;=]
;=]

 My very first commercial model I built very much to scale of an actual building. But when I brought it into Poser it was all wrong, so I had to eyeball it and scale it until it looked right.

Grated that was almost 8 years ago and at a time where I wasn't so familiar with the Max-to-Poser scaling but still.. if I made a 1x1 meter box in Max it looked wrong in Poser, and If I imported it with everything unchecked, it was so big you couldn't even see it in the scene.

Again this was Poser 4 and Max 3.1 - things may have changed since then. I hope they have. :)

When I make models these days I bring in Ryan or Simon to the modeller and scale things so that they look right :) (Trekkie's Patented Eyeball Measuring System™ L) since that appears more accurate than making a REAL scale model in another program.

It's stil a crude way of doing it, but since it seems to me that the obj scale differs from program to program it works better for me...

The conversion prsets from the DS OBJ import are:

1 unit = 1 metre
Cinema 4D, Lightwave, 3DStudio Max, Mirai, Modo

1 unit = 1 cm
DS itself, Hexagon, Maya

1 unit = 8 ft
Bryce, Poser

1 unit = 1 inch
Carrara

1 unit = 2.5cm
XSI

1 unit = 10 cm
Silo

1 unit = 50 cm
Blender

Very useful table, Richard, thanks.