Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me solve my latest mystery. I use Poser 11 and I imported a model I made of a spy's car and imported it into Poser. I parented all parts (doors, wheels, etc) to the body, checked my hierarchy menu and then clicked "create new figure". I opened the new figures folder in my character menu and there was my model. I clicked the double check marks to add it to the scene and then began editing the origins for each body part to define the axes of rotations for doors, trunk lid, etc. Once done, I clicked the "save to library" command and overwrote the old new figures model with the new. I then deleted it from my scene and clicked the double check marks again to add the new iteration of the model to my scene. But when I do, all that shows up is a green cross (much like the thing that shows the origin for editing rotation) embedded in the floor (see pic). It doesn't move or translate with any erc dial movement. And the menu at the top left of the scene says that the figure (named "car body" and all parented body parts (doors, wheels, etc) are there, but the scene is empty. In the properties tab "visible" is checked on for everything. Can anyone tell me what I've done wrong? Thanks in advance for any help.

Steve

Usually one get that when the cr2 can't find the Obj. First i wold check is to open the cr2 in a text editor and look for the Geometry path just to ensure that it's the correct one.

Poser generally issues an error message if there is anything in the CR2 that it can't find, so it seems to think it found the necessary items, but is refusing to show them to you. The scale could be extremely large or tiny....
Or the Save As Character decided to only save a small part of the car AS the whole unit.
if it's the latter, I'm sorry to say, all you can do is start over.
It helps to save your Poser file often with different names at every step of the creation process.
Car-Imported, Car-sorted, Car Hierarchy, etc. This will prevent the loss of all work in the event of an error or (in my case) a change of mind.

I checked and the .cr2 points to the correct .obj file, so that isn't the problem I don't see how it could possibly be a scale problem, because as I created it in Wings (my modeling program of choice) I had it scaled to Poser-sized people and didn't change the scale as I exported the .obj file. Fortunately if it's a case where I have to start over, I have all the original .obj files saved. But I find it hard to believe that Poser would be such a quirky program as to do this. I've made models in the past (see my freebies section) and never had such an issue. Granted it's been a few years since I attempted something like this, but even so, if this was an issue of Poser just doing this arbitrarily, it stands to reason that it would have happened to me before. I'm just stumped... and frustrated when I think of all the weeks of on and off work I've put into this

It used to happen to me regularly! But it's been a long time for me.
I'm Very sorry you have lost work.

I have the care re-saved as a figure and again all parts are now part of it (doors, wheels, etc). I edited the origin of rotation for one door and saved it to my new figures folder with a different name and then went to my scene and attempted to delete it, so I could load the newly names figure and check if it loads correctly. When I did, I got the message "Are you sure you want to delete the current object (FIGURE_Setup)". Not sure what that means and if I should go ahead and delete... I went ahead and did so just to see what happens and again it shows that everything loaded, but my scene is empty except for the green crosshair. What on earth is going on?

So, here's what I know so far.....

• I can use props to create a figure
• When I have all props set and some (doors, wheels, etc) parented to a single main prop (car body), I go to Poser's window>hierarchy editor and check my hierarchy.
• Satisfied that there's a main prop and all subsequent props are parented to it, I highlight the main prop and click "create new figure", and get the message "create new figure. This action is not undoable. Continue?" .
• I click "ok" and give the new figure a name. I then delete all props from my scene.
• I now go to the new figures folder and the model is there. I click the double check mark to "add to scene" and the model loads just fine.
• I edit the axis of rotation for the parts, and click the plus sign "save to library"
• whether I save it with the same name and over-write the old model, or save it with a new name it makes no difference.
• Starting with a new scene and clicking the double check mark to add the model to the scene and all I get is the green crosshair which doesn't move, rotate or scale.
• The menu on the upper left of the scene says the model is there but it isn't

Not sure what to do now....

"Can anyone tell me what I've done wrong? Thanks in advance for any help."

This qualifies as "any help" since it's certainly not of professional grade.

This behavior is similar to Poser's behavior when it can not match a rigging bone in a figure to an object group. It will simply not load the child group that doesn't match up. ie: The internal names do not match. Check to be sure the figure doesn't have any default bones that have not been assigned or match with an object group.

On "FIGIRE_Setup" - I assume that's the generated bone to qualify your new item as a "Figure." You may need to go into the Setup Room and set the Internal name of the bone so that it matches the name of your primary parent object group. So, for instance, if the body of the car is named "body" then rename the Internal Name of the rigging bone for your car "body." If the car is "fully rigged" with real bones and such, you'll need to be sure each bone's internal name matches the name of the correct object group.

The behavior of "everything looks great during the first part of the process and then it's all horribly borked when I try to load the very same figure" is typical... :) Poser had all that geometry already loaded when you were first creating the figure. But, when loading the figure and encountering errors, it didn't bother with it because no rigging matched the group names it encountered. (It loads parented props on figures just fine because they're not of the same class of geometry.)

On scale - Is the geometry as presented in Poser scaled at 100%? IOW, when you had the geometry loaded on the stage, it showed it as 100% scale, right? If not, Poser could have rescaled it, perhaps, to its default scale during the "figure-creation" process and if it was far out of bounds then that could cause problems. For quick/dirty solve, export the object from Poser after you've scaled it down to whatever you need, then import that geometry at 1. (Poser does pretty good with scaling, but it'll also do a few wonky things with it, too. :) )

scale showed 100% when I first imported the geometry and turned it into a prop. As for the setup room, I understand very little about it, but once the figure is loaded (i.e; the model is loaded and says so, but nothing except a green crosshair is visible), I enter the set up room and the car body and it's internal name are the same (see pic). So are all the body parts

If you have ever looked at a CR2 file, you can spot differences between figure (uses a figureResFile to load the whole figure OBJ and geomHandlerGeom to assign the groups to actors) and prop geometry (uses an objFileGeom to load a single actor's OBJ). But, you can actually make a rigged figure from individual prop geometry alone. For mechanical parts like a car, which don't bend when the actors rotate, this is easier to do. If every body part of the car figure references a separate OBJ file, you'll get what you expect.

This is the way that Poser handles replacing a body part with a prop.

I will admit that I am yet to claim any mastery of the setup room, because I've spent 20+ years hand editing CR2 files, since the setup room has yet to gain my trust, and did not exist when I began ;-). Learning Setup is on my "To procrastinate about forever" list ;-) [No! Bad hand!]

I concur 100% with Morkonan's assessment of ensuring that the internal bone names exactly match the group names you want for your body part actors.

My workflow for creating figures is different and I don't use most of these Poser tools, so I can't really offer direct help, but maybe I can offer a different perspective. I've sometimes used props in my scene that are not centered on themselves, so that when I rotate or even move them slightly they fly out of the view. The green axes you see represent the origin for the body part. As you select the body and different parts of the figure the origin should change. I'm think that if the axes don't change all of the origins are the same. The figure itself may not show up because it's actually located somewhere else in the scene, perhaps far away. You might look at the x,y,z parameter and origin values for the figure body and body parts and see if these are big numbers. Maybe this will help.

When I lose a component in a scne I can sometimes find it by going to the top camera and zooming way out (selecting the camera and scaling it to bigger and bigger numbers - 500, 1000, 3000, etc). If the figure circle is enabled you may be able to find where it is.

The warning when you delete a figure is a standard advisory, useful if you accidentally hit the delete key for example. The "undoable" message is similar, essentially advising you to back up your work.

an0malaus, if you look in the pic above, of the setup room, you'll see that the name and internal name both are the same. So, the bones that Poser created, reference the correct part. And Michael, I've looked at every camera angle and distance and the car isn't there. However, the figure circle you mentioned. is there and it sits in the middle of the scene. at ground level and never moves. No translate dials or scale dials have any effect on position or size. Looking in the setup room, all the bones are there, but the figure just isn't there in the scene. It's almost as if the model is invisible.... but all my "visible" check boxes are checked to the "on" position, so I know that isn't it. And I now have one other clue, but I don't know what it means. When I first save the prop car as figure, everything is fine. I open a new scene, or just delete the contents of the current scene, and load the model from my "new figures" folder and it loads just fine. But whether I make any adjustments to the body parts (doors, wheels, etc) or not, as soon as I attempt to Save it, this happens. I've tried saving it in different folders, with different names, and always this happens. So, somehow the act of saving causes this

OK, problem solved, I think. Within an obj file, facets can belong to multiple groups, as groups can be used for more than just actor assignments. The format of the grouping statement in OBJ files is as follows:

g groupname1 groupname2
f 1/1/1 2/2/2 3/3/3 1/1/1
...

The characters which delimit group names are spaces, therefore you cannot have spaces within a group name. Since your internal body part names contain spaces, the group parsing algorithm in the obj file loader will fail to match the actor internal names in the Poser CR2 file, since the obj reader will terminate the group name at the first space.

You could get around this, since the Poser CR2 obj group definition for an actor is not exactly tied to the actor's internal name, but for the purposes of the Setup room, it is.

If I have an actor object declaration in a CR2 like:

actor Right Front Wheel:1
    {
    storageOffset 0 0 0
    geomHandlerGeom 13 RightFrontWheel
    }

...

actor Right Front Wheel:1
    {
    ...
    name Right Front Wheel
    ...
    }

In this example, the actor's internal, external and obj group names are all different, which is legal, but the Setup Room doesn't work that way. It wants an exact match between the actor internal name and the group name, so forces actor internal names to exclude spaces. This isn't really a problem if one knows that, but Poser could really help figure creators by warning them when actor internal names contain spaces, which it notably does not.

I think I follow what you mean... barely. But here's an pic of the .cr2 file as seen in Notepad. The main actor is Car Body, and all the other parts are parented to it. Can you look at this example and tell me what I need to change in the main actor? I can then go ahead and change it, plus all the other actors as well...

I'm sorry, I can't scroll that snapshot down to see what the groups are called. Can you share the file on mega, or dropbox, or somewhere, and post or sitemail me the link.

With the mesh data directly incorporated in the cr2 file, you avoid the problem of obj file names (which also cannot have spaces within them, since the name without extension gets used in targetFigure references as an internal identifier of the figure type. The group names, which aren't visible in the snapshot, are still not allowed to have spaces in them.

I sure will. I'm on my lunch break at work, but I'll post it for you either this evening or tomorrow. Thanks -

an0malaus, Here is a drop box link to the .cr2 file I have stored there. If you can take a look and show me how to edit it, I'd appreciate it. Thanks,

Steve

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n2amz76g3n7ot1v/Car.cr2?dl=0

an0malaus posted at 12:16AM Sat, 27 July 2019 - #4357957.....

In this example, the actor's internal, external and obj group names are all different, which is legal, but the Setup Room doesn't work that way. It wants an exact match between the actor internal name and the group name, so forces actor internal names to exclude spaces. This isn't really a problem if one knows that, but Poser could really help figure creators by warning them when actor internal names contain spaces, which it notably does not.

Interesting. The Setup Room should parse out spaces with a hardspace "_" for compatibiltiy when spaces are encountered. Old farts, like myself, always use hardspaces for blank spaces because blank spaces in any filenames/anything always resulted in a computer blowing up somewhere, even if it wasn't the one that was being worked on at the time... :)

@OP - Rename the Internal Name in Poser to "car_body" or "carbody" without the quotes and then open the resulting CR2 in a text editor to make sure there is no blank space between "car" and "body."

Notepad++ is a very awesome text editor and will make your life much easier when it comes down to examining CR2s and other filetypes: https://notepad-plus-plus.org It's free and it's one of the editors all the cool kids use... ;) (You'll notice the difference, immediately, in ease-of-use-for-intended-purposes.)

I checked out the Cr2 file in PoserFileEditor and saw nothing wrong with it. The Geo was inbedded in the file so opend poser and tried to load it and everything loaded just fine.

The problem with the file is that the object definitions for each actor do not contain one group to which all of the facets belong, whose name matches the actor's internal name without spaces in either.

The file also loads all of the meshes for me, as well. But that still won't necessarily help with rigging.

I also note that, for instance, the Left Tire actor contains the mudguard as well as the tyre, so if you want the wheel to be able to spin, the mudguard needs to be part of the Car Body.

Analysing the CR2, none of the actors can have spaces in their internal names. Whether you take Morkonan's suggestion and replace those with '_' underscores or just cut them out, you can still retain the spaces in the "name Car Body" type lines in the actor definition block.

If you're comfortable with editing the CR2 (I concur with the recommendation of Notepad++, as it automatically handles compressed poser files - I use BBEdit on macOS and have a Poser codeless language module for it, so I get syntax colouring of Poser files), you'll need to add the actor named group to every one of the group lines in the actor object declarations, so that all facets are part of the rig. That seems like a lot of editing (even with a multiple search and replace), so I'd recommend using the grouping editor and create a new group matching the actor internal name without spaces, then just add all the facets to it.

I followed your instructions and..... I believe it worked! Running some tests and loading it into scenes now to make sure all is ok. looks good so far

Problem solved! I want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who took time to read and/or respond to this post. After experimenting with editing the .cr2 with Notepad ++ it occurred to me that this entire problem was one of my own making. I postulated that in the process of making my props into a figure, I named the body parts incorrectly... such as "Passenger Door" instead of the proper "Passenger_Door" or perhaps even "PassengerDoor". In other words, I left spaces in the names of the body parts. To test this issue, I loaded all props and re-named them. I created my figure with them and there you go. problem solved. I even re-saved the newly created figure and all is well. Thank you all so very much!

I've used Notepad++ as my primary editor for Poser files for many years. Netherworks has posted a Poser Language File for Notepad++ at Hivewire3D

https://community.hivewire3d.com/resources/notepad-poser-language-file.54/

@Michael_C thanks for the poser language link for Notepad++! I wasn't aware that existed, but I'll make sure to get it, so when I boot my iMac into Windows10 I'll have similar functionality when editing Poser files. Cheers!

Sorry it may be a little late, I have just finished creating a 3D model with many prop parts. As a short cut with loading the whole model i just converted the main prop of the model into a figure and grouped the rest of the props to it. The model loads fine with all the sub prop groups and morph dials working correctly. Using only one prop as the figure with all grouped under it stops Poser naming the props with the prefix of '1'. If i need to hide any props i just use the hierarchy editor and turn on or off as needed. But this way is not for everyone. Thanks. PAT :)

@patlane, the other thing that distinguishes how Poser handles naming actors vs props, is the keyword prefix before the name. A figure's body parts are all "actor" types, while props are all "prop" type. You can make a figure using prop actors, but that prompts Poser to add a numeric suffix each time a prop of that type is loaded into the scene, to distinguish them. An actor, when part of a figure, gets the figure sequence number appended to its internal name, like BODY:2, etc. You can't reuse the same actor name within a figure, but you can have multiple figures of the same type, as the :number suffix distinguishes them.

I want to learn this, but it seems like something you have to practice until you get good with it.