I have recently started modeling in Blender to use the models in Poser 9, currently using Poser 10. I have included two examples because I'm not sure how to explain this. But in this example you see I have a simple cube scaled down. When I import it into Poser see how some of the sides are transparent. Why is this happening? This happens to a few models that I have modeled, they look fine in Blender and when I import them into Poser it looks like some of the sides are invisible, of course if you rotate the obj in poser you can see the sides are actually there. I have been beating my head against a wall trying to figure out why this is happening. Help! lol! blender.jpg

You're normals are flipped. When you spin the cube to the other side, you can see through the walls you can see now... right? In Blender, under properties/mesh display click the normal boxes. and increase the size to around 1.0. you'll be able to the direction of the normals. There might also be an option to flip normals in Poser when you import.

Thanks Joe! Appreciate it

Hope it helps. Blender's Modeler is giving me a hard time too. I used to have a great workflow from Lightwave to Poser. But Lightwave changed the way they import and export OBJ's around the time I too an 8 year hiatus from 3D. Now it's so different it's not worth $800 to upgrade and learn from scratch.

Blender on the other hand has one of the LEAST intuitive modeling interfaces I've ever seen.

Hi Joe

As to spellchecking and this is how it seems to work both in Firefox and Chrome if the word is underlined in red when you type it perhaps a spelling error so just highlight the word then right click it and you should usually see the word or a few versions of it spelled correctly and you can choose one to replace the one that is misspelled. It is the only way I have been able to do spell checking with the markdown editor. As to Blender's interface it can be a bit daunting at first but it is much more user friendly than it was prior to Blender 2.5. On the main page for the Blender forum we have a sticky thread called Welcome and General Blender Info for Newbies that has many useful resources and tutorials to get you up and running with Blender one key resource that I highly recommend to everyone is to download the Blender Hotkey sheet and print it up it indeed help making Blender easier to learn.

Joe@HFG posted at 4:21PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4234907

Hope it helps. Blender's Modeler is giving me a hard time too. I used to have a great workflow from Lightwave to Poser. But Lightwave changed the way they import and export OBJ's around the time I too an 8 year hiatus from 3D. Now it's so different it's not worth $800 to upgrade and learn from scratch.

Blender on the other hand has one of the LEAST intuitive modeling interfaces I've ever seen.

Blender doesn't actually have a "modeling" interface to speak of, as 90% of the modeling features are accessible only through hotkey combinations, or menu lists. The only UI buttons for modeling you have by default, are available in the Tools panel at the left, or in the modifier list. The Create panel does also have some spline modeling tools, and there is some functionality for modeling available in the Grease Pencil panel, also at the left of the UI. Most of the power modeling is done with hotkeys and menu call-outs. This, of course, is quite different from most other applications, which also contain hotkey shortcuts for most operations, but still contain all the same functions in the UI buttons. The Blender Foundation has obviously decided there is a redundancy in doing things that way, and chose to take a different route. Unfortunately, for those coming from other packages, this can lead immediately to confusion or frustration. However, Blender's modeling toolset is one of the most powerful out there, rivaling even the most expensive and largest professional applications, pound for pound, so to speak. It depends very much on what type of workflow you are used to, or what you prefer.

Lobo3433 posted at 6:13PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4234951

Hi Joe

As to spellchecking and this is how it seems to work both in Firefox and Chrome if the word is underlined in red when you type it perhaps a spelling error so just highlight the word then right click it and you should usually see the word or a few versions of it spelled correctly and you can choose one to replace the one that is misspelled.It is the only way I have been able to do spell checking with the markdown editor.

Sorry. Spell checking is now working apparently. When I added that to my signature the forum was using some kind of custom text editor that didn't allow Firefox's spell checking to work. I would make a post and get jumped by grammar and spelling nazi's. Guess it's time to update my siggy.

Haven't really been visiting Rendo since a certain member was disrespectful to me and worst of all WRONG. When instead of being properly disciplined he was made a moderator of the Poser Forum, I decided Rendo was clearly not a safe place for me anymore. At least not the Poser Forum.

Apparently the link to his asinine insulting, and incorrect message exchanges with me have disappeared with the forum restructuring. Suffice it say he claimed, rather obstinately, that Adobe was not a monopoly without recognizing it's market dominance in the graphics arts industry.

Lobo3433 posted at 6:32PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4234951

Hi Joe ...

As to Blender's interface it can be a bit daunting at first but it is much more user friendly than it was prior to Blender 2.5. On the main page for the Blender forum we have a sticky thread called Welcome and General Blender Info for Newbies that has many useful resources and tutorials to get you up and running with Blender one key resource that I highly recommend to everyone is to download the Blender Hotkey sheet and print it up it indeed help making Blender easier to learn.

Thanks again for the tips. I've been working my way toward learning Blender for a few years now. I've watched literally thousands of tutorials, but have always been bottle necked by my experience with Lightwave. It takes a while for 20 years of instinctive keyboard shortcuts to fade away.

My latest attempt is turning out to be FAR MORE rewarding, even though I'm still dealing with a lot of frustration. I know Blender has the chops under the hood. In fact, the only part of the Adobe suite it couldn't currently compete with directly is InDesign.

I'm also trying to teach myself Python programming just to make Adobe Inspired interfaces for Blender. Evidently Blender's Object list is closer to what I would consider LAYERS in Lightwave.

I should have my first Blender produced model in a few weeks. Then I'll teach myself how to get it POSERIZED, and hopefully in the Market.

Glad to see at least the Blender forum is still a great, and safe, community to share both frustrations, ideas, and revelations.

LuxXeon posted at 6:46PM Fri, 23 October 2015 - #4234956

Blender doesn't actually have a "modeling" interface to speak of, as 90% of the modeling features are accessible only through hotkey combinations, or menu lists. The only UI buttons for modeling you have by default, are available in the Tools panel at the left, or in the modifier list. The Create panel does also have some spline modeling tools, and there is some functionality for modeling available in the Grease Pencil panel, also at the left of the UI. Most of the power modeling is done with hotkeys and menu call-outs. This, of course, is quite different from most other applications, which also contain hotkey shortcuts for most operations, but still contain all the same functions in the UI buttons. The Blender Foundation has obviously decided there is a redundancy in doing things that way, and chose to take a different route. Unfortunately, for those coming from other packages, this can lead immediately to confusion or frustration. However, Blender's modeling toolset is one of the most powerful out there, rivaling even the most expensive and largest professional applications, pound for pound, so to speak. It depends very much on what type of workflow you are used to, or what you prefer.

Yeah. I had a fairly solid work flow before I went on hiatus. That's really part of my problem. It's harder to learn something new than to learn from scratch knowing nothing. Once I get the hang of modeling in Blender, I'm sure the rest of it will be a piece of cake. I did most of my armature and animation in Poser, and only modeled in LW. I'm looking forward to the more advanced features of Blender, like the NLE and MoGraf stuff once I'm comfortable actually making and editing objects.

I have a GIANT poser library I need to BLENDERFY!

Well glad to see you hear I do not know about your prior incidents with other forum Mods and do not need to know unless something comes up in the areas I am responsible for which by my signature you will see which areas are my main concern. i am very proud of the Blender forum for it has become exactly what I came in search of when I wanted to expand my hobby and further and my own knowledge and we have some really great people here who will jump in and help when ever we can. I would recommend many of the tutorials that LuxXeon has done he has taken his 3ds max knowledge and translated into Blender that many of us have learned from his guidance and perhaps eventually you might be able to do the same with your Lightwave experience and translating it to Blender that will further enhance our Forum here.

for the short cut ........in edit mode all selected hit ctrl+n.........re calculate normals (hit F6 for options or look near bottom of T panel for them ) you also might like to look at pie menus ........some people like them

oh Lux that's a bit harsh ............no interface ;-) first thing I do when modeling is shift+space then T and/or N if I need to .........guess we do it dif rofl

Joe@HFG posted at 4:57PM Mon, 02 November 2015 - #4234841

You're normals are flipped. When you spin the cube to the other side, you can see through the walls you can see now... right? In Blender, under properties/mesh display click the normal boxes. and increase the size to around 1.0. you'll be able to the direction of the normals. There might also be an option to flip normals in Poser when you import.

Yes, Poser can flip the normals, BUT, you'll still only be able to see one side in Poser. However, Poser will still render BOTH sides of the object, but the the flipped normals will render dark, no matter how much light you shine on them.

Depending on what you want to do or are trying to model, the best thing to do is have all the normals point outward in Blender, and you see that reflected in Poser.

Just a note: As used to be said quite often, "Poser only uses vertice normals to screw things up." In short, Poser doesn't use normals for anything. (Only speaking to the versions up to 2012 that I am familiar with.)

What can use normals, however, is the OpenGL renderer used in the Preview/Posing window. IF there are normals in an object file, it may try to use them. Otherwise, and more intrinsic to OpenGL, it will render faces dependent upon their "winding order" or, in other words, the order in which the vertices used to construct the faces were created.

So, in essence, no 3D object that is going to be used in Poser should be imported with normals. In fact, normals should be stripped from objects intended to be used in Poser, since they can take up a third of the file-size for a Wavefront object and serve no purpose in Poser other than to screw things up... There is, however, a "Normals Front" (Whatever it is) option in the Material Room. I suppose it's there just in case someone wants to screw up Poser with normals or, more likely, so that the Materials being rendered appear relative to the side of the face facing the camera in the rendering application... or something. In any event, it's not worth relying on to actually "do anything" in the Preview/Pose window, especially if a face's winding order is not in accordance with the normal that was generated for that face.

I'm not a Blender user, but I guess I will be, one day. :) So, I don't know how Blender calcs winding order when constructing a face. It should always be "clockwise", relative to the "front" of the face for automated procedures. (The rest being determined by the user's actions.) If this holds true in Blender, for the most part, then exporting normals with a wavefront object solely intended for Poser is not necessary and is counterproductive. If, however, ones wishes to create something that is specifically designed to be "invisible" in the Preview Window, one could possibly use normals for that, so only its interior is visible. But, I think the better way is to reverse the winding order, instead, since Poser only uses normals to bork stuff up with... :)

heddheld posted at 7:22PM Fri, 13 November 2015 - #4235104

oh Lux that's a bit harsh ............no interface ;-) first thing I do when modeling is shift+space then T and/or N if I need to .........guess we do it dif rofl

I think I should clarify what I actually meant, as what I'd said was clearly misinterpreted (and that's my own fault). I wasn't suggesting anything negative about Blender's UI, and I apologize if it sounded that way. I was merely trying to point out that most of the powerful modeling tools are not represented by icons, as they usually are in most other packages, and many of the common modeling tools do not have "buttons" either, and need to be accessed with hotkeys, to reveal the menus that contain them. This is obviously "by design", and intentional for a faster workflow and cleaner interface by the Foundation. For example, more than 70% of the important modeling tools revealed in W (Specials), CTRL+F, CTRL+E, and CTRL+V aren't represented by buttons or icons anywhere else in the UI panels that I'm aware of, and many of these features are essential modeling tools, accessed through hotkeys and menus. This isn't intended as a criticism, but to people just starting out, or coming over from other packages where every single function has an icon or button, these tools can be well overlooked, and result in some confusion.

@Morkonan

I read your reply above with great interest. I have been a vendor here at Renderosity for many years now and whilst I'm not a novice when it comes to using Poser I only really use it to test out the products I intend to sell for use in Poser. I have always exported my models from Blender with the "Write Normals" box checked as I have been of the belief that this was necessary for the proper importation of the obj file into any other software program - including Poser. I also wasn't aware that the normals information contributed so much to the obj file size. Whilst I haven't had any problems with my models appearing incorrectly in the Preview window or rendering incorrectly in Poser I do have a question which you may be able to help me with. I had someone, just very recently, buy one of my models who didn't have a problem using it in Poser but did have problems with a couple of black faces when they rendered my model using the Reality plugin as the integrator with Luxrender. My question is two fold - Firstly is Poser the likely culprit for messing up the face normals when going from Poser to Luxrender via the Reality plugin? Secondly if the normals information is stripped from the obj when exported from Blender; when it is imported into Poser and then exported using the Reality plugin for importing again into Luxrender where does the face normals information come from - is it from Poser or is it not required in Luxrender either?

Morkonan posted at 8:52AM Sat, 14 November 2015 - #4238297

Just a note: As used to be said quite often, "Poser only uses vertice normals to screw things up." In short, Poser doesn't use normals for anything. (Only speaking to the versions up to 2012 that I am familiar with.)

What can use normals, however, is the OpenGL renderer used in the Preview/Posing window. IF there are normals in an object file, it may try to use them. Otherwise, and more intrinsic to OpenGL, it will render faces dependent upon their "winding order" or, in other words, the order in which the vertices used to construct the faces were created.

So, in essence, no 3D object that is going to be used in Poser should be imported with normals. In fact, normals should be stripped from objects intended to be used in Poser, since they can take up a third of the file-size for a Wavefront object and serve no purpose in Poser other than to screw things up... There is, however, a "Normals Front" (Whatever it is) option in the Material Room. I suppose it's there just in case someone wants to screw up Poser with normals or, more likely, so that the Materials being rendered appear relative to the side of the face facing the camera in the rendering application... or something. In any event, it's not worth relying on to actually "do anything" in the Preview/Pose window, especially if a face's winding order is not in accordance with the normal that was generated for that face.

Exporting without normals information is a good idea for non-manifold objects. I wonder how will it affect objects that use tangent normal maps though? The "normals forward" in the material room is good for flat, single-sided objects that are rendering with inverted/flipped normals. For example, you have a single-sided, trans mapped leaf on a tree that is not rendering properly, because it's normals are "flipped". Using this option in the material room will essentially act similar to "double sided" or two-sided material options in other applications. According to the docs, Normals Forward will align all the surface normals to point forward. I assume they mean toward the camera? If so, then that's only useful for flat planar objects, and isn't truly a double-sided material behavior.

For previewing in viewport, you have the option to turn this on at the object level in Poser9 / 2012.