Hi there!

I have some "advanced newbie" questions about poser props.

I made a prop in C4d consisting of various parts that i want to move/rotate and color in Poser individually. Therefore I imported them one after the other and parented them to the base-part of the prop. Now when I move/rotate the base the others follow, which is fine, but:

1.) When I delete that base all other parts remain in the scene, is there a way to delete them all at once?

2.) I extracted the geometry information to external obj-files with Dimension3Ds Poser-tool-collection and now I have a seperate obj-file for every single part of the prop. Is this OK for selling the prop or is there a way to put all the info into one single obj-file?

Thanks for all who answer!

Netrunner

Sounds to me like you need to make it a rigged figure. I ran into this very problem on my current project (a bicycle), and with all the moving part, it was a necessity, especially if I was to include MATs that changed the look. If it's all seperate pieces, they'd have go jump though a lot of hoops to apply MATs... Select a piece, apply MAT, repeat for however many pieces there are.

To start, you say you already have them parented and whatnot? At the bottom of the Hierarchy window, there's a "Create Figure" button, press that and it'll turn your imported and parented pieces into one, basic rigged figure. Granted you're going to haave to open the joint editor to adjust each one, but it saves you the time of going into the Setup Room to rig.

"At the bottom of the Hierarchy window, there's a "Create Figure" button, press that and it'll turn your imported and parented pieces into one, basic rigged figure."

Good ON you, BR - didn't know that!

A far better method to acomplish what you are trying is instead to make the objects a single object in your modelling program, and then assign material or surface values to the different parts you want.  When you export the object, I recomend using wavefront OBJ and also saving the material file (.MTL) with it.  When you import it into Poser, go into the material room, and you should have different materials for the areas you set up.  It is far less messy this way, and far more suitable for commercial propping.

I am not specifically familiar with C4D so I can not talk you through the steps to set up the different surfaces in that program.  There are a number of free programs, however, that will let you redefine surfaces and materials on an object.  If you need such a program, try doing a google search for Meshlab.

Hope this helps.

You did catch the part where he said there's various moving parts, right? If they import it as a solid OBJ, then they'll hafta go into the setup room and add a bone structure manually. At least the way i suggested, poser will add the basic bones according to how you have it parented together, and all you have to do is adjust the joint parameters until they are correct.

no need to add a bone, you can create morphs that will be on the object right in you modelling program by moving the parts.   If it is going to be a prop for commercial the way I recommended is far more appropriate.

Also, common misconception, but a single object can be composed of different/seperate parts in the wavefront format, which also makes adding bones easier. This can be done with groups (called parts in some modeling programs).  These parts not only would have their own material/surface name, but a seperate internal name for the polygon group, also saved in the .MTL file.  The seems should line up, but do not need to be merged or directly shared (though if distortion and twisting is desired when rigged they will have to share the vertices along the seems).

@theKageRu: THANKS SO MUCH, U ARE GENIOUS!!!!

I even tried the "import as a whole" way some time ago, but wasn't able to move parts then. I allways tried to make a  figure and rig in poser can drive u crazy for non-organic forms!

Moving the parts in C4D and then imorting the whole object as a morph-target again, thats the point i didn't see.

Now it works perfect!

Thanks to all others too!

Netrunner

Glad the object morphs will do what you want.  It's what I use when I don't feel like rigging bones and groups and messing with joint parameters.

Yeah, sometimes the importing the whole object, even with groups can be tricky. You need to have the right export settings in your modelling app (I am unfamiliar with C4D so I can not help there) and then the right setting importing into Poser.  When I export out of Lightwave I actually load the model first into Carrara to insure the groupings work (Carrara seems more forgiving than Poser) and then re-save the Wavefront Object there before importing to Poser.  So far this has worked fairly well, and the groups are usually there.  Also, you can load the OBJ into UVMapper and then select polygons based on their surface names and add make them a group in UV Mapper - this works fairly well as well.

You also might want to give the book "How'd you do that - Poser Character Creation for beginners Volume 1" a look. While not the greatest book, it does have some useful information and walkthroughs once you get past the fluff.