That Clown Pass or Mat ID would also be extremely useful for making masks when compositing in an image editor - I didn't realise EZMat had that, it'll come in handy so thanks for pointing that out!

Now all I need is some way to do a ZDepth pass in Superfly and I'll be happy ;)

You could make a single material, save that as an mt5, apply it to a single material zone, then select the option to 'Apply to all' (I can't remember if that's a wacro or in the right-click menu). Then save as mc6 collection as ghostship says.

Maybe the pieces (what pieces?) were saved as one big clump? More info required - some details and maybe a screenshot of what you're trying to import?

FBX was updated in the last version I downloaded (beta) - 11.3.791 (see screen below). I think the latest public release is now 11.3.b813, so maybe check your version number on the about screen and download the installer files again if you're running an older version?

In Superfly every surface is reflective. In Firefly, Specular is used to provide fake reflections (shininess) because FF is so slow at rendering reflections, especially blurred/soft ones. SF is way faster, so it does raytraced reflections on everything all the time. SF interprets any specular node as reflection. This is why SF requires an environment to enclose the scene.

If glass is rendering too dark, check the maximum bounces setting on the right hand side of the render settings dialog - the default is 3 which is too low. Also, I prefer using GGX for any of the nodes which have the Distribution option - I think the falloff from the highlights looks far better.

I would like to say that the point of Substance Painter, Quixel, the whole PBR Metal/Rough or Spec/Gloss workflows, is precisely that the materials are defined by the pixel values painted into the various maps. There is no setting up materials required, you just plug in the maps and render. That's it, done. The workflow has been driven by the games industry and the need for artists to create stuff faster with more accuracy and consistency. You can have old concrete, bright steel, varnished wood, dirty cotton, wet stone and scruffy plastic all in the same object with a default material zone and the only setup required would be plugging in the image maps. If you know the pixel values needed and the UV unwraps are good, you could even create maps in an image editor without needing to 3d paint.

Yes, material zones are useful, and often required - especially for materials that need complex shaders like refraction or translucency for example, or objects that are intended to be customised by users - it's just that PBR Metal/Rough plus Poser's Physical Surface root does provide an alternative method when creating materials.

LOL. I wish the rest of the apps I use each had an offline manual as comprehensive!

@ghostship2 - File menu - Export - Morph Injection - select and export your morph. Does this work for you?

Things I can think of - first, try converting the mesh to quads in Blender (I believe there is a command to do that but I don't use Blender so can't be any more help there).

I have seen this kind of shading issue occasionally when I've been modelling in another app, and the solution there was to delete the vertex normal map. When exporting from Sketchup as OBJ, is there an option to preserve normals? If there is try exporting with it on and off, see if there is any difference. (I believe that Poser should ignore normals if they are in the obj and calculate them itself, but still worth a shot.) If not, try exporting from Blender in case there are more export options for OBJ.

When importing OBJ files to Poser there is an option to 'Make polygon normals consistent'; try importing with this on and off to see if it makes any difference. You could also try using FBX as the file format just in case that makes a difference (the current beta of Poser is up to date with FBX format).

A last possibility is to try adding one level of subdivision as this will create new geometry, but as the mesh has not been built for subD it probably won't work well ;)

Thanks Tim!

In Poser, change the display to Hidden Line then post a screenshot of the model. As RedPhantom says, meshes made in CAD software don't often convert to polygonal meshes very well. Also, is your Poser image a screenshot of the Preview window, or a Firefly render or Superfly?

Thanks for the heads up. Does the team have any plans to publish a roadmap for Poser 12?

PS. Thanks for the release notes, they are very welcome ;)

There are different 'flavours' of FBX. Take a look through Poser's FBX export, there are lots of options. If you can get one robot loaded, try re-saving it (don't overwrite original) and experiment with the options? Also, Autodesk have a free utility called FBX Review, might be worth trying to open it in that.

La Femme with bones in Lightwave via FBX export from Poser.

Go to Edit - General Preferences - Interface tab - click Edit Shortcuts button at the bottom ... does that help?