Why oh why can't the various 3D programs agree on a standard way to use the .OBJ file? The whole point of exporting and importing files is that the file should be treated the same way at both ends!!! Why doesn't this work with .OBJ? Okay. Now that I've vented, does anybody know a consistent setting of the various checkboxes (invert normals, reverse winding, etc.) in UVMapper that will ALWAYS work between Anim8or and Poser? I thought I had a combination that worked, but it seems to have failed, or maybe I'm not doing something right in Anim8or. Is a 'lathed' object in Anim8or basically different from an 'extruded' object?

I don't know anim8or but I do know you should export with no normals at all if it's for poser. Poser doesn't use them but they can screw things up so they look inside out in preview mode. So uncheck the export normals box. I have no idea if that'll help. Maybe describe the effect? Black spots, inside out etc?

THANK YOU! "In preview mode" was the key phrase. In all the trial-and-error struggles to make something that didn't look like an M.C. Escher fantasy, I never tried rendering! I just assumed that an object that looked weird in the preview mode would be the same when rendered. On further observation, the rule seems to be: A closed object like a torus or a sphere shows OK in preview, but anything with open ends (curved tube, horn, etc) goes Escherisch in preview. Again, tremendous thanks.

heyas; ock, sounds like you're looking at the back view of the normals. that's, er, normal for the item to look inside out if it's an open mesh and you're looking at the 'inside.' of course, if your inside is where the outside should be, those are reversed normals. you can fix that with the grouping tool, just put everything in a group and hit the button that says reverse group normals. you can then save it out of poser. only be careful if you made morph targets for it; not sure if that will mess up the vertex order. (i dont think it does.)