Meshes getting triangularized in transit by packages (i,e, all the polygons are divided into triangles, adding much to bulk and spoiling the appearance) is a persistent nuisance. Thus I have put in the Poser Fun Stuff a Windows application DETRIANG which tries to un-triangularize an .OBJ mesh. It joins any two triangular faces to make a 4-sided face if: They are consecutive in listing order. They share 2 corners but not all 3. Their texture map addresses at the shared corners (if any) match. They are not more than 5deg away from co-planar. They are in the same (material) area and group. It also has an option to safe more storage space by removing the "vn" (= surface-normal) information.

Wow, cool utility! This will be handy cutting down the size of those meshes! Thanks Anthony! -Trav

Call me stupid, but I don't get it...triangles are the basis for every mesh I've seen or created in the past 10 years of model making. The whole point of using triangular faces is the superior ability to smooth. It would seem a rectangular face would not function as well and create a "bumpier" skin, degrading th equality of the mesh. Reducing the face count IS a usefull function for many, I'm sure, but I've never experienced the problems you're addressing. I assume I haven't translated from the same packages....which file formats does this happen between? ..just trying to understand the problem...

heya; fox, grab the cat or horse model and look at the mesh. they are NOT made of triangles! poser does sometimes choke on untriangulatable pentagonal shapes, but everything being a triangle is not a requirement. rectangles can be quite handy and nicely smoothed in broad areas like flanks, chests, etc. also, dunno how you create a mesh, but i usually do some kind of extrusion, which creates rectangles, not triangles. and sometimes they don't triangulate spectacularly well. :) sounds like a cool idea... some triangulated meshes might not take too well to being quadrangulized, but... :: its worth a shot. :)

hmmmmmm..thanks, Bloodsong... Looks like all the Poser meshes are composed of quad faces...I never noticed before...guess I never thought Poser would use something this crude! there is no possible way these meshes could be better using the same vertexes unless ith render is "bending" the quad faces into triangles. AA...what do you mean by "spoiling the appearance"? how could this be so? If the surface is flat...though, not many in Poser, this could be a saver. The whole face thing here IS interesting...hope I didn't sound too gruff... Fox

If I am looking at an object as a mesh rather than as a render, I find that putting a diagonal in all the 4-sided faces clutters the screen picture and makes it harder to understand.

This is true...screen clutter does make editing difficult. In Max, I normally just turn the "invisable" edges off....something doable to Max's meshes. All the "diagonal" faces are normally invisable edges. Maybe this is partly to blame for my not fully understanding your original post, AA. So...though I do usually see meshes displayed in a square format, I always have assumed the triangular split is there...I was very disappointed to see Poser's meshes ARE composer of quad faces. Guess this is why I always turn them into hi-resolution meshes before rendering using pNurbs...just what Mobius did for his P3 figure. obj files..and most others...imported into Max have all visable faces, but they can be edited to "turn off"...but a more tedious job than the editing!

heya; the bending bit is a little deep for me... but another good thing about non-triangle meshes is when you are doing morphs. well... in amorphium, you want to work with a lot of little triangles, but if you are doing something in ray dream, say... if you want to make a body part longer, it is easier to do with a straight-edged selection than with a jaggy-edged triangularized selection. um.. ya know? :)