Hi all,

Hope this is the right place for this question. I have been tasked with making an animation using Poser figures, but they need to be immersed into a point cloud scene. I am working with the point cloud in Rhino. I would like to export key stills from a Poser animation into Rhino with the same textures as in Poser. It is important, for example, the skin color and t-shirt color of the Poser figures.

I have found that if I export as a .dxf, .vrml, or .obj (with the associated .mtl file) that the mesh in Rhino is untextured (also, the mesh is grouped in a way that is not the same as in the Poser figure, but that's a later problem). Also, the eyelashes appear odd. I have found that I can manually find and bring in the appropriate texture images from the Poser directory and apply them in Rhino. However, for 3 figures in a 5 second animation with, say, 10 frames per second, that would be 150 manual texturings.

Is there ANY way to get around this?

I really appreciate your help!

"I have found that if I export as a .dxf, .vrml, or .obj (with the associated .mtl file) that the mesh in Rhino is untextured" Assuming you solve the grouping problem, can't you just export the maps from Poser and make Rhino "like" them?

There "was" a script to export .mdd out of poser and all associated maps, but I the link in the first post below is dead..

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2743741

Hi, thanks for the reply!

It does appear as though the link is dead. I guess I am not sure what you mean by the statement: "can't you just export the maps from Poser and make Rhino "like" them?" I am already capable of applying the textures in Rhino, but the process is quite tedious. I am looking for something more automatic, if that's a possibility.

Thank you.

I didn't see .fbx included in what you tried. Poser can export .fbx, and it exports the folder of texture maps and a "texture atlas."

Would that give you what you need?

You can export multi animation frames, by the way.

If you have Poser pro there are a couple of utilities that might reduce some of the work
Scripts->Utility->collectSceneInventory - This dumps out all the texture files and base objects into one directory.
Scripts->Partners->Dimension3D->Batch Imp Exp - I've never tried this script in a real problem but it appears to generate an obj for each frame. There is also an mtl file.

The eye lashes require the transparency mask to work properly.

With no point cache based export/import options available in Rhino or poser such as Alembic or MDD.

It would seem FBX is your best option for animation

https://www.rhino3d.com/formats/

I personally prefer MDD for my Figure transfer method to Maxon C4D for animated filmmaking as it preserves perfect mesh fidelity for the joints and facial animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjokKZX1r6I

I have that .mdd Poser export script, but have not touched if for over 8 years, and it was the copyrighted property of Steven Cleland from the U.K.

"Steven Cleland retains all copyrights to the enclosed materials. The Buyer is not purchasing the contents, only the right to use the contents.2008"

I don't know if it is okay to share it.

And of course, I don't know if it still works. It **did **export point cloud for each frame of an animation.

:: og ::

MDD is sort of "out of fashion " these days to be honest, so it is not surprising that Rhino does not support it.

The Advantage of MDD in my Iclone/Daz studio/ Cinema4D pipeline, is that you can send over your animated figures one time as a single .obj file and get him/her textured in your receiving application.

from then on you just send over a new replacement MDD files
and the mesh updates with the new motions you created in Iclone and retargeted in Daz studio .

One of the central Characters ,in my feature length animated film, was an exported .obj file that I animated with different MDD motion data for over two years via MDD exports from Daz studio until the story required changing his hair and clothing which changed the point count requiring a new .obj export to C4D.

evenhem is not interacting, so I guess this discussion is moot. the Cleland script for Poser works just like you described, Wolf. It seems like it would solve the original post. Does .fbx work the same way ... obj once, with texture maps attached, then ? for each frame?

With FBX yes you only need to send the character once and ,in some FBX supported apps, I believe you can send over new "takes" containing new animation data to the FBX character already in the scene over there.

Not sure what level of FBX Rhino supports though as I have never used it.

Sorry, I was out of town on yesterday and couldn't focus on this problem. I am examining it now, and will get back to you all as soon as I can to update you on how it's turning out.

Thank you so much for the good leads!

It looks like ironsoul's suggestion of "Scripts->Partners->Dimension3D->Batch Imp Exp" works pretty well! The only thing is, it doesn't appear to get some of the clothing textures for some reason:

I don't really see the advantage of Scripts->Utility->collectSceneInventory other than if I wasn't able to find the textures in the first place. Also, collectSceneInventory dumps a lot of other objects into the folder that I don't need access to, like lights and cameras.

I'm going to look into wolf359's .fbx suggestion now...

Update: I noticed that the textures that Rhino did not accept were .jpg's. The first thing I tried was converting these to .png's, which is the format of the textures Rhino was accepting. This did not work. The next thing I noticed was that the unacceptable textures were of non-square dimension. I changed the dimension of the RyanCasualShirt.jpg texture to be square using photoshop and it worked!

Does this pipeline solve your inquiry, automation of all 150 setups?

Yes! Upon importing the .obj in Rhino, now all the textures show up. I have to import each .obj and capture stills of the motion individually, but that is a Rhino question.

Thanks for your help!