I purchased Poser over the weekend and have been trying to play around with it. I find the navigation tools impossible. I am attempting to import various .obj files in the hopes of performing cloth operations on them. It seems these imported objects disappear from view and I am unable to find them again no matter where I move the camera. When I have, on rare occassion, spotted them, the geometry looks askew with no relationships to world space. Is there a "fit to screen" or "zoom extents" function? A search for these functions in the manual returns nothing. Also why does Poser automatically group my individual models when I import them as .obj? Is there a preference setting I am overlooking? When I have been successful importing geometry it is only temporary as everything freezes up in the cloth room when I specify what items to "collide against". Is there a polygon limit for collision detection? BTW - I am running a very high-end machine using XP with 1GB Ram and I have the latest service updates........ On this machine I am able to run FormZ 3.9 and Cinema 4D 8.5 with absolutely no problems. I can't help but think that Poser 5 is buggy as HELL! Please advise. My number reason for purchasing Poser was for still cloth simulations that I intend to export to Cinema and render. Thanks for any feedback! Kevin

I suspect you need to slow down a bit - that's quite a list for a first weekend, and the subject line doesn't really guide one. First off, the source and scale of the .obj files you are trying to import is important. Poser operates on a tiny scale compared to many other 3D programs, so you may do wlel to scale down objects (try 1/1000 of "normal" scale first). If you scale within Poser be aware that the object will by default scale about it's center point - so if it's on "the floor" before you scale, it will be nowhere near the floor after scaling. This can be fixed by "dropping" it to the floor (things CAN drop up, gulp). In working mode backface culling is always active. This means that if the .OBJ was produced in a program that favours the reverse definition of a backface (such as, IIRC, Cinema4D) you may find a model is less visible or clear than you'd like. This kind of problem can be "fixed" within Poser or many other tools (but I cna't list here very possible fix for every situation that MIGHT be resulting in the circumstances that lead to your post). Give these ideas a whirl, and see if that helps a bit. Cheers, Cliff

Cliff: I appreciate your advice on the scaling. It did indeed help. I found that I need to use a scale factor of about 60 when importing from Cinema 4D. And flipping the normals helps with the display problem.... However, is there a function to fit all within the document window? Also, how can I import my obj. file and still maintain separate entities? Poser seems to clump everything together as one mesh. If I import each piece individually while scaling nothing will line up and I will have to adjust manually. Any advice?

Scaler 3.0 is a good free download from here if you are wanting to export poser images. it automatically scales .obj's to whatever percent you want. normally, a 100% scale rate works.

Cinema4D has it's own scaling factor setting for each file type, so Scaler 3.0 is proba bly redundant. Kevin.. There isn't a function that I know of to "fit all to window" like Cinema4D has. However, having said that probably the easiest way to find something in a scene if you've lost it is to select a camera (main, aux, or posing cameras would be favourite here). Make sure it's selected in the "current item" indicator/controls under the display window. Then select "Point At" from the Object menu. Select some part of the object you want to find (for example "Body" works for a figure). your currently selected camera is now pointing towards the center of your indictaed object - zoom in and out to set the scale. Importing the OBJ file hasn't actually collapsed it into a single mesh, it's just that Poser treats "groups" differently to many modleling applications (which I hasten to add Poser is not). If you want to "split apart" the groups from within an imported .OBj within poser then... Select the object (.obj) in question. Select the "Grouping Tool" from the editing tool strip. You should immediately recognise that there's a drop-down list of your "groups". Click "spawn props" button. This will create duplicate copies of each group as seperate objects. Close the Grouping Editor AND DELETE THE ORIGINAL OBJECT! (Ignore this step and you'll tear your hair out, probably). You now have all the individual "groups" as seperate entities. Hope that helps - Next? (be aware I will likely not respond again till tomorrow due to it being late here). Cheers, Cliff

Thanks Cliff!! If you still happen to be up..... Why do my spawned items move? Now, I have to readjust their position relative to each other and there are many items.... Thanks again, Kevin

Hmmm... no idea on that one offhand. As far as I recall it's always kept the bits in place for me. If you want to (and legally can) you could send a .OBJ in my direction and I'll try and check it out. I'd say a C4D file, but I'm waaaay back on V6. Cheers, Cliff PS yup just tried it here and the spawning produced "props" in exactly the same place as the original - no movement I can detect at all. I'm guessing it's something to do with the .OBJ file Cinema4D is producing but offhand... :(

The Standard Poser Scale Unit is equal to 8 feet (96 inches). If you model in a program that uses 1 Unit = 1 Foot then your object will come into poser 8 times as large as you would expect. If you use a program that models in inches, it will come into Poser 96 times bigger than it should. Most programs use inches, centimeters or Meters as their standard unit (and they allow you to specify the units if you wish). When you are finished modeling, and ready to export your OBJ, just do a 3D scale centered on 0,0,0 of the GLOBAL axes (not the object axes because this will cause your object to com into poser Waaaaay off center - so scale on the global 0,0,0). The factor you should use is 1/96 for inches or as decimal it is .0104167 and as a percent (some systems scale by percent rather than as a decimal factor) it is 1.04167%. Then import the OBJ into Poser with NOTHING checked and your object will be PRECISELY scaled AND in the proper position in the scene.

You also want to make sure that you have the latest Poser service release - SR4.1.

Cliff: I'll be glad to send the obj. file this evening. Thanks for all the help everyone. Kevin

Why do my objects spin and/or move in the document window when calculating a cloth simulation?

If Cinema V8 has similar settings to v7 set the import export factor for wavefront obj to 1000 then import a poser figure from the geometries folder...create the clothes then export, now you should be able to open the obj in poser and uncheck all the boxes on import and it will be the correct size and in the right place (please note V7 flipped the normals on export and import so watch for that)....your objects spin and move coz you moved the camera at various points, pain in the neck i know ;o)......Steve

Ah yes - the camera spinning and not the object. tip1: Use the pose camera when you can. It doesn't "aniamte". tip2: Most other cameras "aniamte". This means that if you're on a frame othr than frame 1 and you make a camera adjustment, Poser sets a keyframe and aniamtes the camera between keyframes (including frame 1 as a default key frame). This can be "fixed" in various ways. You CAN use the "keyframe2 controls to the right, with the camera selected, to jump to "next keyframe" or "previous keyframe" and hit the minus key to delete the keyframe. But I prefer bringing up the aniamtion pallette (Window menu) and selecting everything to do with all cameras past frame 1 and then presseing delete. Wipe out all the camera aniamtion in one go. Cheers, Cliff (a big fan of the aniamtion pallette)