Hiya. I'm encountering an irritation when I import a Poser model into Bryce. First, the hair was all messed up and not right. Second, there was a what looked like a missing piece of a leg! It was near a knee. The glitch was small, but VERY noticable. Are there any basic rules for using Poser (4) objects in Bryce (4 or 5)?

sounds like you need a patch for one or the other program. Poser patch: www.curiouslabs.com Bryce patch: www.corel.com luck BT

When you say the hair was messed up, do you mean the mesh or the texture? If the mesh, you do need a patch. Note that small mesh glitches that are almost un-noticeable in Poser are much more visible in Bryce. This can happen when you resize one body part but not the adjacent one.

There are several good tutorials here. I don't remember the links, but search around (or maybe someone else remembers). All the answers above about mesh glitches and patches are correct. I've found, (and maybe I'm just doing it wrong), that the textures, trans, and bump maps never come over right. In (Windows) you can select each body part separately by Ctrl/Clicking to list everything under the cursor. Then check what material is actually loaded for that part. Eyelashes are particularly tricky. [I could go into more detail if needed, but others understand this better than I.] For things with transparency, like hair, don't forget to check the "Blend Transparency" option in the material editor. Another thing is that bump maps in Bryce are similar to height maps, with value == bump height. In classic Poser, bump maps (.bum) are entirely different, and will give very dissapointing results in Bryce. Often both types map are hiding somewhere in the textures. Also, it seems best to set the bump channel to around 10%. Much more becomes really coarse. Again, I may be doing this wrong, or there may be a better way. It's a lot of effort, but the results can be worthwhile. You've asked in the right place. If you'd post a detail of the render you are having difficulties with, I'm sure we could pinpoint the problem better.

About the patches. I've been using Corel's Bryce 5, but Metacreations' Poser 4. Could that be the problem? Also, how should I be exporting these figures from Poser? ..as Wavefront objects....? That's how I have been doing it. It doesn't come out anything like it looks in Poser. The textures are off. The expressions is just ODD. Plus they don't look real anymore. :( I'm going to render a thing to show you what I mean, but no laughing! Hey! I'm new to Poser! :P The URL to it is; http://mercuryzap.netfirms.com/YG/sample.jpg

You'll need to manually apply the transmaps for the hair and eyelashes. Make sure gamma correction is off. Check the ambience, usually comes in way too high, turn it down. Offhand I don't have a link to a tutorial, but if you search the archives you will find lots of links on how to import Poser figures.

I don't know about the expressions, but the hair problem is due to trans maps not importing correctly. This never seems to work correctly; you need to select the hair in Bryce and apply the maps in the material editor. Should look something like figure:

Woohoo! Well, I found a real helpful tutorial here. Thanks for your pointers, too! My only problem now is the hair. I've been trying to figure out how to get it to look like it does in Poser. I'll play with it, but does anyone have any ideas about that? I couldn't find a tutorial that was useful. The setting I have it on now are as they were in the tutorial for importing models and it looks better but still doesn't look right. Anyone have a clue? I really appreciate all your help!

Which hair are you using? Kozaboro's hair is pretty easy to import and look good in Bryce (and it's free). If you haven't checked it out, click on the link for Digital Babes on the sidebar. You will have to manually apply the transmaps in Bryce for the hair. You'll have to put a bead in the transparency channel and load the transmaps in the picture editor, also you will need to select blend transparency in the material options drop down menu.

Attached Link: http://www.awakemm.com/poserarcana/tutorials/tb/tb01/index.html

I just came from the Poser forum and went to Tony Bolton's web site at http://www.awakemm.com/poserarcana/tutorials/tb/tb01/index.html This location has a complete, step-by-step tutorial on how to correctly export Poser 4 figures into Bryce 5. It is *extremely* informative - I'm going to print out the entire tutorial and try it myself when I get some time! He goes into great detail to avoid the pitfalls you've encountered. HTH!

Misha883's material editor screen has no ambience, which will make the hair look dull, and a value for specularity but the specularity colours are black, which means no specularity either.

Er... Right on both counts. Thank you Phantast. Do you find it best to drive the ambient color channel (the top one) from the Poser texture map, or use a constant color? Ambience value channel (middle) just use the slider?

Heya. I think I figured it out. I got it looking a lot better from the tutorial Scaramouche gave me/us a few posts ago. I'll be sure to show you all the final result when I finish the scene (if it ever finishes rendering!!!) Anyway, I don't have it right now, but I'll show you my improvement sometime later today. Busy busy! Thanks A LOT again!

I tried your suggestions, which worked quite well. Thank you. Both specularity and ambience need to be applied with caution, as too much really flashes out the image. But the middle example with white specularity and blue halo really adds lively color vs the original (on left). The jury is still out on ambience. Too much and the 3D form is washed out. Still, adding a little set at deep red puts interesting color into the shadows. The affect would likely be better if I went back and adjusted lighting everywhere else. I'll try this on future renders.

Ugh! I've been "tweaking" my figure I want to import into Bryce. This is an odd problem. I added a prop pearl necklace, exported it, and then tried to import it in Bryce. The problem is Bryce gets an error during the process. I deleted the necklace and it WORKED FINE. Why is that? Do I need to have some setting? I used a separate necklace on the same model and that worked. Man, this is complicated? Anyone have any clues?

I've had simular problems with some props not exporting very well as an OBJ, usually the one's that were origionally in another format (3ds, dxf, etc...) My suggestion is to export the figure without the prop as an obj, then just the prop as a 3ds, then import both to bryce...saves alot of trouble if you put the entire figure in a big box that completly covers the figure, and export it in both exports....this allows you to line the two imports up in bryce, and keeps the size consistant. 3ds exports from poser to bryce require quite a bit of smoothing.

I did as you suggested Bladesmith. It worked pretty well. It was kind of a pain parfecting the placement and size because I probably didn't export or import it right. Do any of you all have any tips for making a skin texture appear to be wet in Bryce (figure imported from Poser). I figure it is probably the specularity, but I was wondering if anything else could be done. What's a good setting for the specularity? Again, thanks for all of your help!

In answer to Misha883, in the normal case I always prefer to put the texture in the ambience channel, and the magic number is 12. It gives much more life to the material. Problems with props - sometimes it can due to an error in the mesh, like a reversed normal, which can screw things up in unpredictable ways. Wet skin - careful use of specularity and a bump map to look like droplets.

I usually use the texture to drive the ambience, diffusion, and specular...Set at 85% diffuse, 15% ambiance, and 5 to 20% specular... Wet skin...yeah, specularity higher and just a wee bit of reflection (doesn't take much). Like the idea about a droplet bumpmap.

Those settings were good Bladesmith! Does anyone have any lighting tips for having lighting similar (or exactly) light the models look in Poser? Maybe a way without having to make everything else in the scene change? I haven't had a lot of time to experiment with that since I got Poser. :P

Lighting in Bryce is BETTER than in Poser ...

The big difference between lighting in poser and bryce is that in bryce you've got the sun (one big white light), while in poser you've got three or more colored lights...that's the defaults. Skin tones seem to look better with tinted lights. You can of course add radial and spotlights to mimic this in bryce, but that will change the lighting on the whole scene... One can adjust the falloff on the lights so that they only strike the subject. A couple of lights with ranged or squared falloff, and a slight tint, would probobly get the effect you're after (DeanCarl mentioned something simular to this, and his renders do look great). One thing I like to do...I don't like bryce's default sky settings. I turn the shadow intensity down from the default 90'ish to around 60 or so, and change the ambiant color (in the skylab, not the matlab) to an offwhite instead of just plain old white. hope that helps....8^)