Attached Link: Blender history

You won't ever see Blender for sale.

It's been around for a long time now and the move to Open Source has probably been the best thing for it. If you don't want to shell out bucks for 3D software, try familiarising yourself with it. You can model, animate and render with it. It also has a compositor, video editor, fluid simulator, cloth dynamics, physics, particles, smoke......the list goes on. In short it pretty much does everything. It is not an easy program to get to grips with but there are literally thousands of tutorials (of varying usefulness) on the Internet, and an enthusiastic, helpful user base.

Click the link for a bit of history.

Go to Window ->3D Shading and a 3d Shading menu will apeear where you can set the display options.

Attached Link: Material based smoothing in Poser

Quote -
actually, i recently read a tutorial for doing this in a pretty affordable UV mapping app.  so Max isn't the only software that can do it, even if it is the only modeling app.  have you already researched smoothing options in Blender, or have you just searched on this particular issue? i'm doubting it's possible, but i'll take a look around more generally if you haven't already.

Yes, that's my tutorial. This technique has been around for a long time. The crux of the problem is that Poser is basically a renderer and has limited, or no, tools for this sort of thing.
I do it this way because it's quick and reliable.
I suppose you might say that it's a bit of a restriction to have the smoothing set by material zones, but it's a big step up from just having one smoothing angle for the entire object. I've never found it to be much of a problem, really.

Quote - i already have my groups on the model. i made a specific group where i want smooth and where i dont want it. and this was done in blender.
but when you imort this into poser its all together. so can you explain what you are talking?

I don't know anything about smoothing or grouping in Blender, so I can't help you out there.
Have a look at the tutorial. It might get the idea across to you. I tried to make it as straightforward as possible. Remember, it's based on smoothing by material zones, not setting up smoothing groups as such. You could say this technique turns a material zone into a smoothing group. At least it might be helpful to think of it that way.

Well ecxuse me, but it is not just as much of a complication. I was assuming the original question was about building objects for use in Poser. Maybe it wasn't. If it was, the quickest, most effective way, bar none, is to set smoothing angles based on material names.
Good grief, exporting and importing objects, creating figures and props - what a waste of time.
You asked for an easier way and I provided it.

You guys overcomplicate everything. Smooth by material names in your UV mapping software and you can have as many different smoothing angles on an object as you want, regardless of  whether it's a prop, a figure, or anything else.

Thanks a lot for that. It's much appreciated. I'll have a play around with it and see what happens.

Purposely creating non-planar polygons is considered extremely poor modelling practice, not just on models destined for Poser. On a model of any complexity you will definitely end up with problems. Non-planar polys are often the reason that people end up with what looks like black holes in their renders. The same goes for n-gons in Poser. I can guarantee that at some point they will cause render errors. The best solution is just not to do it.

Quote - could this be a problem of ''crease angle 80 ''

;)

Nope. Poser refuses to render long, thin triangles correctly and that's that.
This has been a fundamental problem with Poser for years, as well as the fact that it won't even look at n-gons. Fixing these issues would be a great step in the right direction.

Yes, adding more geometry for soft body simulations makes sense, but I really can't see it applying to rigid bodies, although this is the first simulation I've ever run. I think I can see an addiction starting to form.

I've baked the animation at 200 degrees for 2 hours and it's nice and crispy on top. On the whole, the animation looks quite good. Bullet is an amazing piece of work. I'll try some other ideas and keep digging for solid, useful information.

Why are so many Blender tutorials so shallow, I wonder?

Do you mean changing it from bounding box to something else?
With 400 bricks in the simulation, that's going to be fun - not.
Really? Adding vertices improves the accuracy of the simulation?

Quote - one point tho. we found the only real cure for the UV/Import artifact in poser was to split the vertices.

(the artifact and research about it here - www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php and here www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php )

That's exactly what I suggested in that original, endless thread. Splitting selected vertices is definitely a valid technique in the right circumstances.

The first problem is that Poser's crease angle is more or less useless. Being able to set only one smoothing angle for a whole object is pointless. These two renders illustrate why.

The first one is the object as it came into Poser from my modelling software. I know from experience that I want a smoothing angle on the pipes of 50 degrees, but I don't want anywhere near that on the hard edged bits of the model. The crease angle is set to 50 in Poser and you can see all the areas where that is far too much, causing the classic, ugly, over-smoothed Poser look.

The second render is the object after it was taken into Ultimate Unwrap and smoothing angles were set up on a per surface, or material, basis. The pipes get 50 degrees, the small hemispheres at the top left get 0, other bits get 5 degrees and so on.

Back in Poser, the crease angle is still set to 50, but because the smoothing angles were set up in Ultimate Unwrap, Poser respects them and renders accordingly.
There was no splitting of vertices and no adding extra geometry with tiny bevels.

Quote - I did not say it was useless to cut and paste as a way to make the artifact go away. I said it is useless to claim the cut and paste is a differentiator, or proof or evidence, between two hypotheses being examined - topology versus normals (it changes both), or Maya bug versus Poser bug

Nobody said you had to dissect things. But what you're doing is called "hackery" in computer software. "I changed the 2 to a 5, and it doesn't crash anymore. I don't know why that works."

Software developers get fired for that kind of shit. If you want to hack your way past the problem and move on, that' fine.

I'm responding to the statements that Poser has a bug and a bug report should be filed.

If you don't want to find out what the problem is, and where it lies, you are free to remain unclear on what works and what doesn't and whose fault that is.  :) But you should stop reading this thread, because eventually I will reveal the underlying problem.

I never claimed that the cut and paste method was a way to test a hypothesis, only that
it was a solution to a problem, so don't put words in my mouth. This so called "hackery" is something that is required to obtain properly rendered objects, under certain specific conditions, due to the nature of  Poser's render engine. You seem intent on tearing down anything I say in this forum, simply because I disagree with you. You just can't stand anyone having an opposing view to yours, can you? You know, you're not the absolute font of knowledge on 3D, you're just not. I wonder how much 3D modelling you've actually done. Bugger all, I suspect.

I don't need a lecture from you on computing or anything else, thanks very much.
I've been creating models that render perfectly in Poser for years, without a single complaint. I already know what works and what doesn't, but if you want to dick around for a week with a cylinder, then go right ahead. I'm way beyond the point of caring. The atmosphere in here has become toxic. It's no wonder people get the shits and leave. I have better things to do than to waste any more time here. It's just not worth it.

The cut and paste solution is not useless. It fixes the problem and allows one to move on to other things. Khai's solution worked for him too. Fixes like these have been applied to models destined for Poser for years. Part of finishing a modelling project is knowing the software you use and working accordingly. I'd rather get things done than dissect objects down to the atomic level.

Then again..........exporting a cylinder from LightWave straight into Poser showed no problems at all, so perhaps something in Maya's object export routine is somewhat askew.