So -- I bought a model in .obj format and it is enormous! About a gig and a half! Needless to say, Poser 11 slows to a crawl when I import this thing. I have tried to reduce the file size, but so far no luck. The file chokes meshlab to death when I try to decimate. What the heck can I do? The model is of a pirate - and it has no materials at all. In fact, I'm trying to use it as a "statue", so final polygon count can be pretty low. Anybody have suggestions??

... so I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that your model is probably some millions of polygons and Poser wasn't made to deal with that. Person probably made it in Zbrush and never bothered to optimize for outside use - you'd sadly have to retopologize it in some program and most methods of automatic retopo aren't really good.

Try Meshmixer or ZBrush. Thanks for reminding me to uninstall Meshlab... I really needed those 78Mb

I would just use the free Instant Meshes retopo software, it's the same algorithm that Modo uses and gives comparable results to Zbrush's ZRemesher with organically shaped models. I've used both and for general auto retopology they're pretty similar really, for your purposes it will be fine. If you're uncertain just do a little research, can't beat free and a good reputation.

https://github.com/wjakob/instant-meshes

Afrodite-Ohki you are totally right -- the model is enormous - and, yes, I do believe it was created in Zbrush. Thing is, I can load it in Poser OK but then I have to scale it down to about 25% just to fit it in a scene. As long as I don't put too many figures and props in there I'm good. But it's a pain and I really wanted to be able to use it more. Also, it was advertised with mats but was sold without them -- so I'm a little ticked about that too. This was NOT a Renderosity vendor, by the way.

Primorge and Twiztidkidd -- thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into that.

Oh yeah. It's also about 2 mb

You're welcome

is the object a grouped or a solid (just 1) obj? If it's a solid object, after you've scaled it down to the size you want you can open the group editor (may have to create a new group) select all, and create a new prop. I don't remember if the new prop has all the material zones or not though. Then save the new prop to your library. I have done this several times with some of the large models from Shredder, available on sharecg.

bwldrd -- it is just a solid object -- I'll try your suggestion

Also, you can try using poser's reduce polygons (it's in the object menu up top) to see if you can get something manageable poly wise, but still have enough details to suit you. But that will convert the model to triangles instead of quads.

Poser 11 has its own reduce polygon option under the object menu. It doesn't do too bad unless you get carried away and try to reduce it too much

I tried reducing the polygons -- didn't do it right the first time and NOW that option is greyed out

Best option is the $50 Atangeo Balancer, quite easy to use and dedicated to mesh reduction. But if you need free, I'd add one more possibility - I wonder if you might somewhere have an old Daz Studio 3 with the Decimator plugin in it?

If you send me the model I'll decimate and retopo it for you. If it's really complex like a scanned classical sculpture with lots of attenuated details (and please god no cherubs) I'll have to bow out though. It would require more work and time than I'm willing to take away from my own projects, I can only really work on my stuff during the weekends. Just a thought. PM me if so.

Primorge -- that's a great offer! I might take you up on that - but first I'm gonna struggle with it a little more. Just so you know -- it's this thing --- https://3dexport.com/3dmodel-pirate-woman-high-poly-272731.htm

And since it has no mats I was just gonna use it as sort of a statue - decorating a pirate themed bar.

Hartybart -- thanks for the info. I don't have an old DAZ program. I use Poser - for whatever insane reason...

I'll take a look and at least tell you the pitfalls you might face.

Hm. Doesn't look too bad, depending on your target poly count you might lose or have some blurring of the sculpted details on the sword scabbard in particular. If you have too many problems I'd be willing to give it a go but I can't say how long I'd take to do it. All things considered decimation and auto retopo is very fast. Seriously, download instant meshes, spend 15 minutes familiarizing yourself, do some trial runs with iterations of lower vertex count targets and perhaps edge flow manipulations with the brush/comb tools if necessary, and find what you like. It should only be a matter of a couple hours of playing around, and that's a very "making allowances" estimate, to get something reasonable. I'd start with a reduction of about half of the vertex count to start and go from there.

Primorge - thanks! I'll do that and report back on my success.

Yikes. I just looked at the poly count on that thing... guess I missed that part. 13 million polys? I was thinking like 500 k or something. Not to be a pessimist but, if I may, why did you think you could use something like that in Poser? I don't think I'd want to put that kind of stress on my machine. That's just ridiculous that someone would sell such a thing :(

I would have just thrown a clearance pirate get up on V4 and called it a day lol.

I did consider buying a costume for V4 and just doing it like that ... but oh no I had to be adventurous. The model was only 12 bucks, so.... In any case, I'm running a pretty fast new iMac, so like I say, the model WILL load -- but it's hell to work with. Incidentally, the site said I could contact the vendor and ask for different file types -- so I messaged and asked about reducing the size. I got a response in (translated) Russian telling me no way Poser could handle that model and there was nothing they could do, etc. Yeah...right.

Oh, and I missed the part about 13 million polys too.

How many polys? Holy flippin' blink!

Guess the easiest thing would be to just load the ztl file and reduce it in zbrush

I left zbrush off the table for OP because many people don't own it. But yes decimating it in zbrush and then using a retopo solution would probably be best. Zbrush can handle something like that, especially if it's tris. Better results actually if its tris to quads from my experience. You could rent mudbox for a month for 10 bucks and do it too but the retopo solution there isn't as nice as ZRemesher. Actually if he can decimate into tris somehow, if it's not already, Instant Meshes can do it too but if it's quads to begin with it will probably throw a fit... it works best with reducing high poly scans with messy tri topology really.

On the topic of retopo Ghostman, you really need to play with Blender's Retopoflow add on... I've been having alot of fun with it. Clothes are ridiculously easy to make with it too.

Foley, maybe purchase Salty Scarlett for La Femme and use that if you want a really nice female pirate outfit. Very well made, lots of accessories, and on sale for 13 bucks. It would have uses beyond just pirate themes also... La Femme comes with Poser too. Just a suggestion.

Edit; nevermind the on sale bit, sale ended yesterday.

Primorge - and everybody - many thanks for being incredibly helpful. Good news! The vendor herself has offered to trim that model down. She says she will reduce it to about 3 million polys -- which is a little better.
Yeah, should have bought the Salty Scarlett set. Thought about it.

Gotta say -- I really can't imagine why the vendor made that model so big. It's not even rigged. It's just a solid hunk of...whatever.

Hey that's great news Foley. If you want to reduce it further any of the options above should work, also Blender has a pretty good decimation modifier too.

foley posted at 8:59AM Sat, 03 July 2021 - #4422450

Gotta say -- I really can't imagine why the vendor made that model so big. It's not even rigged. It's just a solid hunk of...whatever.

The fact that it's just a giant hunk of polys is why it's so big. If it were intended for articulation and deformation with a rig it would have to be optimized for that, requiring very deliberate edge flow and economical use of polys. I'll go out on a limb and say it was just pure laziness. A static model like that should number in the 50k range, if that, without any real loss of detail and the finer details handled by displacements and normal/bump maps. For an animation ready model the resolution should be much lower than that optimally. Retopology and modeling for animation is a very specific skill that takes years of practice. Generally those things are handled in a pipeline of studio artists who specialize and are very good at a particular practice. The model you purchased would be impossible to animate with a rig, let alone uv map, and very difficult as well to assign useful precise material zones or polygroups to for use in anything outside of zbrush

One can rent zbrush per month now so that might be a solution as well when needed. I'm not much into Blender. I do all my work in Zbrush now. Have been for a couple of years.

There's a reason Zbrush is the industry standard. It's very focused on a particular thing. Still in all Blender's sculpting is surprisingly good even though it's more of a swiss army knife.

Mudbox is my preferred sculpting software simply because it's very stripped down, uncluttered, and has a more conventional viewport navigation system than Zbrush. Unfortunately once it was taken over by Autodesk it ceased being updated for years, similar in a lot of ways to how Daz acquired Hex and Carrara and just kept them on coma life support. Let's hope Adobe doesn't do a similar thing with the newly acquired Substance Painter, although Pilgway is coming up with their own texturing and PBR materials solution called 3dCoat Textura that looks pretty promising... you'll be able to rent that for about 10 dollars a month, cheaper than the Adobe subscription plan. Which seems viable for those Adobe haters... which I'm not, if I had to get rid of all of my software and keep only one it would be Photoshop.

I haven't really gotten too much into PBR materials yet but I've played a bit with Epic's Quixel (which is free) but it feels very much unfinished and sort of janky. I think I'm going to rent Textura and start there... as for now I do any UV based painting with Mudbox which I like very much and have spent some time translating alot of my Photoshop abr's over to. PTex and Polypainting is too unfriendly for content destined for Poser I think. Maybe that will all change if Subdivision functions become more standard and accepted in Poser. As it is now hardly anyone is taking advantage of Poser's subdivision in any meaningful way, and I think that's because you either need Zbrush to take advantage (which is a seriously myopic and all-eggs-in-one-basket move on SM's part, and very uninclusive) or you need to use Poser's own morph brush (the morph putty brush :D) which is fine for poke thru but otherwise is like trying to sculpt with boxing gloves on. Or maybe it's just because there aren't as many Poser content creator's as there once was, which has more implications than just less content for users but also changes the watering hole dynamic between the content creators that remain I'd imagine.

Sorry for the drift, just being conversational about stuff that's rarely talked about here.

Text editor here at Rendo is very tablet unfriendly or maybe my auto correct is too aggressive, disregard all of the plurals appearing as possessives.

So -- the vendor crunched the model down to "only" two million polys. Still looks OK and loads much easier. Good enough for government work.

I used Shade3D or Blender3D to separate out the parts and regroup them. In Shade3D, I can size to Poser dimension during import and export. Do not delete polygons and do not add polygons, and do not re-UV the separated parts - this is so that you can use the same textures of the larger model, based off its UV. Import the required parts into Poser for your camera viewpoint, omitting the parts which will not be visible. That could help in managing Poser scene memory size. Well, that's what I do anyway.

Well -- I've never messed with Shade or Blender. Haven't even used Poser in a long time. I'm a video guy - I work with Final Cut, Motion, Logic, etc. etc. I really didn't feel like learning yet another software program LOL

infinity10 posted at 5:09PM Mon, 05 July 2021 - #4422529

I used Shade3D or Blender3D to separate out the parts and regroup them. In Shade3D, I can size to Poser dimension during import and export. Do not delete polygons and do not add polygons, and do not re-UV the separated parts - this is so that you can use the same textures of the larger model, based off its UV. Import the required parts into Poser for your camera viewpoint, omitting the parts which will not be visible. That could help in managing Poser scene memory size. Well, that's what I do anyway.

The mesh was 13 million polys infinity10. No UVs. 13. Million. Polys. Lol. Vertex or poly painted by the looks of it. Doesn't translate to Poser. Imagine trying to unwrap that thing ;)

I wonder if shade can handle a 13 mill obj now that I think of it. Grouping would be an immense slog.

For a laugh I just did the math. It's the equivalent of having 194 and a half V4 meshes in your poser scene.

I guess theoretically it shouldn't work -- and yet - Poser 11 DID open the file and let me move it around just fine. But I knew I couldn't use something that humongous for any complicated scenes. Amazing that it could handle it.

Oh no, I agree Foley. For some strange reason Poser is pretty robust with such things.

I took a look at the model - on the site, that is, I ain't putting that in me system - and I'm not surprised it's so flippin' big. Looks like every single detail is modelled in.