I've been struggling with Poser 5 and being new to Poser in general. Currently my biggest hassles are -

Importing .obj files. Doesn't seem to matter what program I generate them in when I import them into Poser they turn into dreaded black silhouettes. Reversing normals doesn't seem to help. The program UVMapper, which was recommended as a solution to another problem (grouping and naming polygons outside of Poser), only deals with .obj files.

Main hassle number 2 is animating dynamic cloth clothing. When I do the calculate dynamics routine it ALWAYS hangs on some frame or another and just loops over and over on some inconsistency. Varying the parameters for the fabric and collisions can help but at a certain point it becomes merely arbitrary. Nudging such and such parameter merely changes the frame where the calculation hangs.

Can anyone help with these?

Not sure I understand the part "UVMapper .... only deals with .obj files." Are you not importing OBJ files into Poser? As for the second, it is possible that part of your clothing is touching or intersecting the figure when at zero.

Can not be sure without seeing it. If you would like to send me the model then I'll be happy to take a look at it. pcooke@philc.net

heyas; make sure your object has only triangles and quads. also, do not use any double-sided polygons. in uvmapper, you can also try to 'fix degenerate facets,' which is the insert key. it will tell you if it found (and fixed) any.

I had weird import problems a while back. Black polygons and weird streaks. Turned out I had some duplicated polygons. I had to go back to a previous version of the Lightwave file before I'd accidentally pasted twice. What a drag.

heyas; scupper, when that happens, use the lightwave... um... i forget the command, but there's one in there that will merge duplicate polygons. but do be careful when you paste something right on top of itself! (i hate when that happens!)

Re. importing .obj files - my point was that obj files ALWAYS end up as black silhouettes regardless of where they are sourced from - even from UVMapper. Having said that all my original meshes begin their life in Imagine. Can't afford stuff like Lightwave. This probably means that all meshes have double sided polygons. Imagine meshes when imported into other programs usually have lots of holes because the normals alternate direction from one polygon to the next. The only way to deal with this usually is to force them to be double sided. Any (old) Imagine users know of a fix?

heyas; there's an import opion on poser to 'make all polygon normals consistant.' it might not work perfectly, though. you might try asking on the modellers forum if anybody has imagine and what the deal might be.