I use Reiss Studio's Body Studio to bring Poser objects into Max. Within Max, I use various particle systems to interact with the Poser figures. However, the Poser figures I use (Vic and Mike 3) have such a high polygon count, it takes forever to do the calculations. Generally, I only want certain parts of the body to react with the particles (feet, hands, etc). So what I want to do is to set up my animation for my primary figure, then establish a "minimized" figure with just the parts I want using the same animation sequence. What I want to know if there is some way to delete parts of a body, without loosing all of the bones, so the animation matches the origional (without having to export the figure, delete the polygons in Max I don't need, re-import it into poser, and re-do all of the skinning/boneing). Is this do-able somehow? Michael Logue

You won't have to re-do the boning. If you only delete entire groups from the figure mesh, then morphs on the remaining body parts will still work. Save your reduced mesh under a different name, take a copy of the figure's CR2, and edit it to point to the new mesh. As an alternative, there are reduced resolution versions of V3 and M3, currently only available for DAZ|Studio; but shortly to be released for Poser as well.

OK.. I'll give that a try. Never messed with CR2 files, but I should be able to figure it out with a bit of experimentation. I had heard about the reduced poly figures, but could only find them in bundle packages on DAZ. That would be ever better if they do begin selling them. I could use them for my disembodied bodies to reduce poly count even more. Thanks!

Attached Link: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/cr2newobj.html

Hey, great! I'll check it out. Mucho thanks!

Got it working. I actually ended up saving a step. When I do the export to .OBJ, I just select the body parts I want instead of the whole figure. Then I just re-import it, save it as a figure, and drop in my copied/modified cr2 file. Works great! Thanks again!

Glad to hear it, and providing you get the OBJ export options right (you obviously have), that method will work for basic figures. You also have the big advantage of not requiring an external modeller at all. Just to warn anyone reading this that it won't work for conforming figures such as clothing, because the exported OBJ won't be perfectly zeroed as it has to be to conform properly; not without extra steps, anyway.

Roger that. I ran into the problem with the minimized figure not matching up with the actual figure. My target body parts for this experiment were the feet. in order to get the figure to zero properly, I also had to export the head and hands - this gave it the proper 'ballance" to match the full figure perfectly.