I know the number of people who might care about this are few but.. When Firefly renders you get a "adding objects" status bar. I was curious why some figures render faster than others regardless of their polygon count. Well I took the slowest ones and reduced their obj to one material and they rendered super quick. So "adding objects" is a material zone calculation. But the question still existed as to why some rendered slower. Then I opened the obj file and found the difference. Some obj files have hundreds of fragmented g/usemtl strewn throught the obj file instead of groupped neatly together. g lHand usemtl SkinHands f 17250/35129 20780/18660 32811/35130 32810/35131 g lForeArm usemtl SkinBody f 32811/35130 32812/35132 32654/25808 32650/25807 g lHand usemtl SkinHands f 20780/18660 17249/35133 32812/35132 32811/35130 g lForeArm usemtl SkinBody f 32812/35132 32813/35134 32655/25805 32654/25808 g lHand usemtl SkinHands f 17249/35133 20777/18658 32813/35134 32812/35132 g lForeArm usemtl SkinBody f 32813/35134 32814/35135 32656/18657 32655/25805 g lHand usemtl SkinHands f 20777/18658 17248/25803 32814/35135 32813/35134 ----------------------------------------------------------- It should more simply say: g lHand usemtl SkinHands f 17250/35129 20780/18660 32811/35130 32810/35131 f 20780/18660 17249/35133 32812/35132 32811/35130 f 17249/35133 20777/18658 32813/35134 32812/35132 f 20777/18658 17248/25803 32814/35135 32813/35134 g lForeArm usemtl SkinBody f 32811/35130 32812/35132 32654/25808 32650/25807 f 32812/35132 32813/35134 32655/25805 32654/25808 f 32813/35134 32814/35135 32656/18657 32655/25805 This can be easily caused my remapping/regrouping, etc etc. A python utility or something for this would be awesome.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Something like this should be 1) standard procedure and 2) simple to fix. Unlike vertices/uvs/normals, the order of polygons is inconsequential - as long as they are grouped properly and follow their 'usemtl' material assignments shouldn't matter how you jumble them. I'll have to check, but maybe UVMapper fixes this automatically. That would be slow for all geometries, but at least an immediate solution if it does.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

I think the number of people who should care about this should be more :) Anything to speed up render times! Thanks Anton!

A utility to do this would be great. By hand would take forever. I wonder how many figures are like that in my runtime. LOL.

I actually think UV mapper is one of the programs that throws references all around by the nature of selection and assignment.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

PS: Anyone know how a .obZ is created. I don't beleive you can just click compression. I wanted to see if that cleanups up the obj.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Well, correct Anton, UVMapper doesn't fix this. Deep Exploration does, but in the process it reorders the vertices. It puts each related vertex set together with its facets under the group, but this is no good. The process would be simple enough: Collect all unique groups (g blah) and then move duplicate groups under the first, minding material assignments (usemtl) - which can extend beyond groups. Then do the same for material assignments for each group.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Right. It would have to first move everything reducing redundant goup tags and then, within each group, consolidate the mataerials.

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 15:36

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Good sleuthing, anton! Yes, you're right. UV Mapper doesn't fix this. I've noticed this a lot because when I have a figure with more than say, 10 or 15 materials, I prefer to have them in a set order, so the user can access them more easily in Surface Materials. (I do this by adding a blank body part which contains the materials in the order I want them). Anyway, as I said, I've noticed this when I'm rooting around in obj files and it annoys me, but I don't know the solution. If someone could write an app to correct this, I'd use it a lot. mac PS I'll drop a mention of this at steve cox's forum. He's stil upgrading UVM Pro, and this might be something he could include. mac

Attached Link: "STOMP"" target="_blank">"STOMP"

If you're on a PC, try this utility I wrote. Just load the .obj file, then save it back out (might want to use a new filename). Check the export/save option dialog for facet sorting orders. Cheers.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

btw, S.T.O.M.P stands for "Spanki's Three-d .Obj Manipulation Program" (or something like that.. I just liked the name ;).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Also. I wrote this before I wrote my "Riptide" C4D import/export plugin (wich has the same export features)... the plugin is a bit more robust than STOMP, if you have C4D (7.3 or later) you can also do this conversion using my plugin.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

I posted this a feature request to steve cox, but of course, that would only be good for content creators with a later version of UVM Pro. If someone wrote an app, it could be used by anyone. mac

Good work, Anton! Will start working on a Python utility for this now. After all, in essence all that is needed is some string manipulation - so it shouldn't be too hard! EK

Here's the export dialog.. make sure the option circled in red is selected.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Oh, one more thing... I usually sort 'By Group' and that will clean things up even more (if I recall correctly, I save out the facets by group, but by material within the groups). It might leave a few extra #usemtl lines than doing it by material, but it's a trade-off of more #g lines or more #usemtl lines. Using 'By Group' puts all the group polygons (that belong to the chest, neck, head, etc groups) in the same chunk in the file.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Spanki what program is that for?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

So save out by Material first, then reload and save by group?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Thanks for that, spanki! I just d/ld it and tried it out. It works fine, although I'm wondering if anything else in the obj is changed. I'm sure you'll understand what I mean. I have a horror of putting an obj through all sorts of different apps just to correct minor details. Is there anything I should be worried about? (Off to scour the readme now). mac

Is that the latest UV mapper?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Anton, Try it both ways (by group and by material) - see which works best. Mac, I initially wrote the program to generate 'smoothed' normals between disconnected body parts (to keep seams from showing up in other apps). That function is still there, but the features expanded to allow me to fix other problems with .obj files produced by other apps ;). The only caveat is... I wrote this thing back in 2002 and I hadn't looked much at the code since then, so it may be slow in some areas, or may just crash on some files (?). There is a spec for the .obj file format available, but it is apparently open to a lot of interpretation (based on some of the .obj file output I've seen), so my program may choke on some files, from some programs. My Riptide plugin for C4D re-uses a lot of that code, but I did clean it up and bullet-proof it more - which is why I mentioned that it was more robust. As far as whether anything else gets changed... no, nothing of concequence (the comments change, uv-mapper regions are lost (but retained in the plugin version) but the vertex orders are not changed or anything like that). You CAN change some other things using the program, like consolodating UV vertices, flipping (mirroring) the model, etc.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Anton, sorry, I missed your other question... it's a stand-alone PC program I wrote about 3 years ago (see post and link at message #10, above).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Thanks. I missed that myself.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Very cool utility Spanki! Thanks much!

Who's that Man!. Spanki's the Man! That's who the man! It fixed the problem. The test fragmented Obj's Render supper fast now. Previous test render time:1 Minute New test Render Time: 5 Seconds Ah such a good day. I love it when the community works together. Sending thread link to CL.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Woot! Cool beans. I'll have to crunch some of those files myself.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Previous test render time:1 Minute New test Render Time: 5 Seconds Out of curiosity, what was the size of the OBJ file?

'uv-mapper regions are lost' Ah, that's a pity. I tend to leave regions in for those few people who like to mess with mapping. On the other hand, there are far more people who'd prefer faster renders, so I may just forget the minority on this one. LOL. Thanks again, spanki. mac

Could this be one reason P6 is reputedly slower than P5 to render? They both add objects, but maybe there's a difference in how an obj file is read by them. mac

Mac, I wrote the Cinema 4D plugin becuase C4D's .obj loading leaves a lot to be desired... I was in the process of modelling a humanoid with all the material zones and grouping you find in something like V3. C4D's loader (and/or exporter) botched everything up and I was losing all my material zones, etc. Anyway, while I was at it, I added the code to retain UV-Mapper regions, so I could re-import after doing some mapping and still have the regions around for more mapping etc. later. The above image is the export dialog for the C4D plugin.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Not everyone encounters this problem. But if I did, someone else might too. I tested several obj's. File size didn't matter. The one I tested that I mentioned was 4.5 megs. Render was without textured and unshadowed. Point being, see how long the hang up was?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Spanki. I saved by group first, then reloaded and saved my material. It trimmed 350K off the obj I was testing. lol Thants alot of g/usemtl lines. :)

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Thank you both for the information and the utility!

What we do in life, echoes in eternity.

E-mail | Renderosity Homepage | Renderosity Store | RDNA Store

Yup ;) You don't have to save by group first though... only if you want to try the file that way. You can save by group OR by material.. whichever works best.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

I saved by material on an obj at 1.05Mb with 5 materials. It came out at 1.02Mb. mac PS Unfortunately, I use 3d max, not Cinema 4D

What about the g line span.. Will saving as material reduce that alone?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

It kin of depends on the layout and makeup of the model.. here's an extract from the readme file for my plugin... "...just as background, it doesn't adversely affect anything to change the 'order' facets are listed in the .obj file (unlike vertex ordering, which can redefine things to the extent that may break things like morph files). There are a couple of reasons that you might want to sort them differently, and most of them have to do with aesthetics (.obj files are human-readable ASCII text files) or file-size, but may also be relevant for application implementers who prefer a particular ordering. When you start adding group and material information to a .obj file, anytime a facet (polygon) belongs to a different group, material or region, you have to write out a new record before the facet record. So you can imagine that if you have a humanoid model with 50+ groups and a dozen or so materials, if you just start writing out facets based on the order they may have been created in C4D, you might constantly be writing out a new group or material record every few lines as the list meanders around through the mesh. Generally, you can produce a smaller (and more human-readable) file by sorting them by Group (if there's more groups than materials) or by Material (if there's more materials than groups). Just as an aside, you can still sort by Group, Material or Region, even if you're not exporting that particular record type (though it may or may not ultimately be non-meaningful to do so ;)."

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

So... in general, in something with more groups than materials, sort by group. In something with more materials than groups, sort by material. ....having said that, Poser might 'awlways' load it faster if sorted by material (for example), even though the file may be smaller if sorted by group. I hadn't tested any of this, just trying to shed light on the differences.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Hmmm... resaving the obj from uv mapper retains the new grouped usemtl lines, but puts the file size back up to 1.05Mb. I think what I might end up doing is to save the obj from STOMP first, then do the mapping afterwards. That way, I get grouped material lines AND uv mapper regions. mac

Mac, I was going to suggest that, but forgot ;). A few things can affect th filesize... adding Normals will definately increase it, but also there may be some difference in the number of digits used to specify vertex values.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

The only difference is in the TVerts number. The 2nd one shown was put through STOMP. (9461 instead of 9472) # NumVerts/NumTVerts/NumVNormals/NumFacets 10946/9472/0/12852 # NumVerts/NumTVerts/NumVNormals/NumFacets 10946/9461/0/12852 Er... would Tverts be Triangular? mac

I'm currently comparing the 2 files side by side and I can't see any difference in # of digits. And I never save normals. Now, this model (a nikon camera) has no groups and was saved from 3ds format converted to obj, which is why it's triangulated. mac

OK. I've discovered that practically every obj has TVerts, so triangulation has nothing to do with it. mac

Anyone know how to generate a obz?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

'Anyone know how to generate a obz?' Can you just zip it and change the file extension? Maybe it won't work in reverse, but I know you can open them with Winzip. mac

I just figured it out. T = textures. mac

NumTVerts is the number of texture vertices (UV coordinates). Note that the file can have duplicate TVerts (particularly after a uv-mapping session). There's a function in STOMP to 'Compact Texture Indices' which will get rid of any duplicates, but I'm not sure why that changed if you didn't use that feature... EXCEPT that, if there were 'unused' TVerts, my program might throw them out on exporting (it builds tables of everything it needs and then refers to those tables when exporting, so if something in the file was not actually referenced, it would likely be thrown out).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

It is actually in GZip format. There are several free utilities out there that can compress to GZip (WinZip can only open it, not save to it).

hmm. I dunno if it is that easy. I would rather know how they did it for the Poser6 content. There might be conflicts otherwise.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2226454#2

See linked post for details of (un)compressing.

Actually - it IS that easy :) The OBZ & contained OBJ file must have the same filename (not regarding the extension). Poser 6 does it internally by saving directly into the compressed GZip format. I have done a few experiments myself to confirm this shrug

Well, I've done a few tests, but there's no difference whatsoever in render times. They're identical to the very second. I just tried it with a fairly large obj - 19 groups and 30 materials, but both renders were the same. Anton? What kind of models are you using - human or non-human? I ask because I'm using furniture models, not human figures. mac

SOme people don't have this issue with firefly. Also not all obj files are fragmented. I purpsoely framented a few different types. I also downloaded a few freebies and tested those as well.

It can be a figure or a prop or an imported obj. Basically it is just about some people having a hang on the firefly calculation that reads the materials from the mesh on rendering.

This particular issue has a very specific symptom being a long hang on the "adding objects" status bar. using a script or utility for defragmenting the obj g/usemtle lines is really just another thing people should do during content creation, like adding a white backdrop to a texture, etc. It just gets added to the list of things to check for when building a product.

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 18:08

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Is this what causes Firefly to hang on certain geometries (LisaB's cherry trees, Neftis' hair, etc.)?

could well be... can you run STOMP on them LD?

I would guess that it is a strong possibility if the hang is during "adding objects". Fragmenting of this nature isn't a sign of a bad product, or sloppy work. It is a normal result from remapping/regrouping etc. But if the above hang occurs as described, I would recommend doing what was described above to see if the iissue goes away. If it does then you know that this is something "Your" system has issue with. Other people may see no problem at all. If you can solve the issue, contact your favorite merchants and suggest they see this thread.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Just as an aside, I hadn't checked back on this recently, but "Silo" is is/was writing out rediculously bad .obj files. I think in the one I looked at, it had the above problem (lots of interspersed #usemtl lines) as well as 'v' (vertex) records for every point of every polygon (typically, 3 or more polygons share any one vertex - that's the reason for the lookup table). Of course this was a few month ago - hopefully they've improved things since then.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

ahh.. here's an example of what I was talking about...

~~ snip ~~
...
f 1/9 47/10 49/11 8/12
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
f 10/13 117/14 115/15 4/16
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
f 192/17 200/18 12/19 11/20
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
f 79/21 80/22 82/23 81/24
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
f 224/25 230/26 167/27 17/28
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
vt 0 0
f 134/29 140/30 22/31 21/32
...
~~ snip ~~

...in this case, it's texture coordinates (and it goes on like that for several megabytes of file). Note that ALL of those "vt 0 0" lines could be replaced by ONE line, and then all the indices in the 'f' records point to that one line ('Compact Texture Indices' in STOMP does just that).

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 18:32

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

anton, You're probably right about this being particular to some meshes and not others. I've never had any hangs with 'adding objects' on my own products. Not that they're better than others, but I don't regroup them often. All I do is occasionally shift verts to another material. Anyway, I agree it's something that content creators should do to make things smoother for the end user. mac

Yeah. But it is aslo particular, it seems, to some systems. Some people have no hang, even with fragmented obj's. Not sure why.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

EK, check you IMs.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

My guess is that if some people's systems are sensitive to this particular ussue, some related Material room render problems will go away too with those fragmented obj's

The obj can be imported, figure, prop, hair, etc. Importing just the obj and hitting render will test it. You don't have to load a figure. It might be nice thing if maybe Poser had a option similar to SPanki's on import/export.

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 18:51

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Just to clarify (a link to this thread was posted in one about hanging renders) the hang doesn't occur with any one specific object, but when a large number are together, or ones with a large number of polygons, at least that's my take. I don't think this thread is the answer.

Your mistaken. No it can be just one object. It is not unique to multiples or large polygon objects. I would venture to guess that mustiple figures with more reduntdant tags would jsut compound the issue.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I just did a test with the original MilDragon obj.

MilDragon

original obj fie size 7.70megs ---------------"adding objects" hang: 11sec
obj fie size after using Stomp 7.35megs ---------------"adding objects" hang: 1sec

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 19:38

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I think we're talking about two different things. When I say "hang" I mean the render never continues. Since you have a time there, I'm guessing the render keeps going.

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 19:50

Yeah that is likely a different issue for you.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I just tried Spankis app with 'Urban sprawl'which has 71 material zones..there was no increase at all at render or adding objects time..though the obj did come down in size slightly. Should one expect improved render times on every obj given this process?

Cg Society Portfolio

No, I wouldn't expect EVERY file to have such a significant speedup. The problem is in the way the OBJ's have been saved by some applications. If the OBJ is "well formed" (for Poser) one would expect no speedup whatsoever!

One would expect it if their system was sensitive to this issue. As it says above, not everyone will encounter this issue.
It won't inmpove render times, aside from reducing the wait from "adding objects" which is also mentioned above. :)

If your system is sensitive to this issue, then all objs will take less time to get to the actual "rendering" status bar, if they are "de-fragmented". Though not related to actual rendering, you would get your render faster.

For example, I got my MilDragon render 10 seconds faster(see above). If there were multiple obj, props, clothing etc in your scebe, and your system is sensitive to this issue, it could shave minutes off your wait. Fragmented obj's are usually ones that have undergone repeated grouping changes and material assignment.

Message edited on: 04/24/2005 20:04

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.

can you run STOMP on them LD?

Just tested it on one of the cherry trees, and it worked nicely. And it has the added benefit of not mucking with the vertex order, which means I can use it without worrying about what it'd do to morphs.

Cool.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Firefly renders LisaB Cherry Trees fine for me, and my PC system sure is old and clunky....

Eternal Hobbyist

 

LittleDragon, Out of curiosity, what are your system hardware specs?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Athlon XP 2000+
1GB of DDR memory
A7N8X motherboard (nForce2)
GeForce FX 5700LE (128MB)
WinXP Home Edition
Latest builds of Posers 5-6

Actually this is not a new issue.. This is actually something left over from p5 if you remember the problem with Neftis hair and someone discovered if you regrouped it it worked fine. check out the OBJ it's fragmented. This can be seen in a lot of OBJ's. I actually figured it out with Will Dupree about a month or so ago. if you regroup the object it solves the problem. however regrouping it can also cause other problems. So.. P6 is actually showing it more but it's not a new issue

Thanks for the utility Spanki! I'm going to have to try this out with Aiko, there was a lot of hang when test rendering some morphs I was working on. Good idea to keep a back up of the original though, some updates and add on products will look for the .obj to confirm you own it - if the file has been modified, it might not be recognised. I'm still a complete novice with regards to modelling and mapping, could someone explain what the regions are before I let them go. Thanks!

yeah Storm, both versions use firefly.

Philebus,
regions are something UV mapper uses to help mapping layout. Most users/customers don't need them. They are really most useful to the creator. You can just save a backup.

Message edited on: 04/25/2005 01:59

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I don't understand why this will make a difference in rendering time, it doesn't make sense, the only difference will be the time for loading the character. What I know is that transparencies render very slow in Poser.

Stupidity also evolves!

Philebus (and others), yer welcome ;).

...and good point about keeping the original models around, un-altered. Any of the PFE-style encoded packages rely on finding the original files intact.
Anton explained some about UV-Mapper regions... most .obj file won't have them anyway. In case you're curious, here's an attempt at explaining what they are... UV-Mapper regions are something that (AFAIK) Steve Cox (the author of the UV-Mapper program) created. It's basically a modified 'comment' record within the .obj file that is yet another way of categorizing polygons as belonging to one label or another. Other categories are 'groups' (head, neck, chest, abdomen, etc.) and 'material zones' (SkinBody, SkinHead, Lips, Iris, etc.). Now, suppose you are UV-Mapping a humanoid figure like V2 or V3. ALL of the UV coordinate values fall between 0.0 and 1.0 (there are some exceptions to this for tiling textures). If you load V3 into UV-Mapper, you'll see one big blob of vertces/wireframe. But when you look at textures for V3, you'll notice that the head uses a separate texture file from the body (as do the eyes and teeth and some other parts). So, if you're going to do some changes on the body mapping, you'd typically hide everything, then selectively unhide material groupings like the SkkinTorso, SkinHip, SkinForearm, SkinHand, SkinLeg, etc., etc. until you had all of the materials that made up the 'body' texture map. To keep from having to do this every time you want to make some changes (or just write out a UV-map template), you can assign all of those material groups to a 'Body' region. Then do likewise for a 'Head' region, etc. Once you have some regions set up, you can then hide/unhide entire groups of materials (regions) with one action. The idea is that 'regions' can span or encompass or contain more than one 'group' or 'material' and provide a 3rd (handy) way to easily access groups of polygons.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

kawecki, I think that's what Anton is saying... but he includes the 'loading objects' phase in the total rendering time. He's basically saying, from the time you hit the render button until the render is done (or starts, in this case) is faster on his system with unfragmented .obj files.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

But you hit the render button once the object is loaded and posed. When you start the rendering the model has been loaded into the memory with all translations, rotations, morphs, deformers applied and all the textures loaded into memory. Unless Poser does the stupid actitude at the beginning of the render of doing all the job again loading from the disk.

Stupidity also evolves!

Yes, you'd think so. I guess we'd have to get the answer of exactly what it's doing from CL, but it sure seems to be at least 'processing' the loaded data, if not loading it all over again. The step/phase where Anton is seeing the improvement is in the "Adding Objects.." state. I suspect this has something (everything) to do with the render engine being separate from the display engine. BTW, just for the record... I ran V3 through the process... reduced the filesize by about 300k. I timed several renderings and got mixed results on my system (P4, 2ghz, 1gig memory), but there did seem to be a 5-10 second overall decrease in total render times. I suspect that 'your mileage may vary', depending on the particular model(s) in question and your system particulars.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

kawecki,

When I say "loading objects", I am not refering to the physical act of you clicking from the library. I am refering to the status bar, using that phrase, that appears just before your rendering status bar.

What you are saying by "loading" is not what I was saying by "Loading objects".

Anton

In regards to memory and materials. That "adding objects" status bar is refering to the UVmaterials. It might as well say "i'm busy calculating where all the UV materials are." It would seem that calculation, or something similar is done at rendertime, and not full stored in memory, else there would be no "adding objects" status bar. I had asked CL what the "adding objects" status bar is calculating. The gentleman I spoke to said he wasn't 100% sure but knew it had to do with the UV/materials.

Message edited on: 04/25/2005 03:25

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

impressive bit of detective work folks. Thanks id'ing the problem and sharing a solution!

Thank you Anton and Spanki! I can now use my favourite Bombshell hair in Firefly without problems! Hardly surprising that there were problems, when you look at the OBJ files. Both the Neftis Mihai Hair (Nef_MihaiHair.OBJ) and the Bombshell hair (BombshellV3_Long.obj) appear to be fragmented in places on a 'line by line' basis. I'm so happy now, and grateful to you both for allowing me to use the Bombshell again without problems!!!

Well I'm glad at least one person liked that hairstyle. I thought it was neat. Daio did beautiful portraits with it. lol. It was meant to be shadowed.

Yeah, I remember the bombshell hair discussion, and thought it was odd since there was nothing wrong with it technically. Obviously this was the issue. Gratz!

Message edited on: 04/25/2005 05:57

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

It's working brill thus far Anton - even when I've tried to render with Texture Filtering enabled. One other thought occurs... might it also be possible that the issue you identify has some further connections with the (sometimes 'eternal') time it takes to load textures when Texture Filtering is enabled? Or is that something completely different?

"I know the number of people who might care about this are few but.." ...but there are 90 replies. :) Yes, I know they're mostly from the same people... I'd noticed this myself while nosing around in OBJ files, but never thought about it as a performance problem. Thanks to all involved. I notice that John Wind's Compose utility, which I use a lot, orders groups when saving to OBJ, so that doesn't really help any. Looks like STOMP is going to be a part of my workflow from now on!

I dunno, it could have many cross-over efefcts on anything connected to Poser reading the uv/materials at rendertime. It solved a couple problems I have with bump maps. The ones who would know best are those who wired firefly into Poser. I am curious about this obj/firefly relationship though and if it could extend outside of Poser at all. That's just thinking out loud though. Best way is to test something that always gave you trouble. I would excourage people to post that problems this does seem to fix though. Like I said, CL knows about this thread. Maybe they can get a fix into the service release if we can get them enough info.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

EnglishBob wrote- "Looks like STOMP is going to be a part of my workflow." Yeah I am going to send Spanki a gift certificate this week. :)

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Thanks for the explanations, I don't think I'm going to worry about the regions. I shall test Aiko again tonight (just at lunch now!).

is there a version of STOMP for us Mac users, or are we left out in the cold again? Tthe answer to this might be an argument for a Python script (that doesn't use TkInter). thanks!

hrm...this was mentioned by BLbarret when P5 came out but was lost in the P5 sucks threads. Spanki can I host this utility for you? I'll add a FAQ entry for it too.

Tirjasdyn
http://michellejnorton.com

"is there a version of STOMP for us Mac users, or are we left out in the cold again?" Keep that winter coat handy. I'm afraid there is no version of it for Macs. I hadn't done any python programming yet, so I'm not sure when/why Tkinter is used, but someone may come up with a Python soloution.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Tirjasdyn, let me think about that for a bit... it was/is not yet intended for mass distribution (it still has a 3 year-old (invalid) e-mail address in the readme for example). Maybe for the time-being, you can point people to this thread, so they at least get the other related info.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

No prob Spanky, Let me know.

Tirjasdyn
http://michellejnorton.com

.

.

Re message #1 in this thread :: read and write the .OBJ file with my utility MAKEOBJ. That will consolidate the groups and materials.

bookmark

So, is it better to use MAKEOBJ first then Stomp it? Will there be an updated version of Stomp now that there is some interest? Funny how useful little programs like this can get lost in the shuffle and forgotten due to another dead horse issue of the day.

beryld, Although I hadn't used it, it sounds like Anthony's utility will do the same thing as STOMP, so no need to use both. As for an update - I dunno... been playing around with the code some today though ;).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Awesome thread. Tag.

Creator of PoserPhysics
Creator of OctaneRender for Poser
Blog
Facebook

Spanki if this is helpful CL shared this with me. "the Firefly engine reshuffles its database every time it encountered another batch of polygons that were assigned to an existing material group."

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

As a note, Wings3D will order items in this manner -- and when an item which has the fragmentation issue in it is loaded into wings (such as, yes, v3 and the mil folk), it will split all those parts up into hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of distinct parts. Forgive me -- I have note read the whole thread, only the first ten or so posts, and would like to note that I've been dealing with this for about three years now, and never realized this connection. Anton -- sharp!

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

oh, a further note: Utilities such as Autogroup editor will fragment files in this manner.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Autogroup editor Aha ... I use that. Handy piece of software. But now I'll definitely double check things with STOMP (gotta love that name. ROFL)

Autogroup editor, yep, one of my main tools. I wonder if Quick conform and ClothesConverter do the same thing.

Would it be possible to create a batch function for this utility? I'm sure a lot of folks out there would like to clean up their .obj files, but there are just so MANY!

 

Great idea.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

bookmark

Attached Link: http://www.zenwareonline.com/cr2edit/ver6/geomtools.html

Those who use CR2Edit4, 5 or 6 have been using the Consolidate OBJ tool to fix this, tool added sometime around 2001. Posette (P4NudeWoman) was one of the worst offenders, repairing her file was one of the first things many people did when they got CR2Edit in those days. In version 6, most of the tools which manipulate an OBJ automatically fix the problem. I wouldn't suggest getting CR2Edit just to fix this, since there are free utilities for it, but if you already have it, you don't need to worry about this problem. regards, Dan http://www.zenwareonline.com for CR2Edit6, Zuite, OBJExtractor and OBJRelocator, ZenLiner, and the complete line of Zenware graphics apps

sweet

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I've seen this problem. I've seen it so bad that the OBJ file get to be 3X the original size, in fact. I never knew what it was, but I strongly suspected it had to do with materials. In Max, at least, materials don't work like Poser materials. When you apply an material to one group (or part) of a multi-part object it actually is one "Max" material for the whole thing, with sub-materials (which are the Poser ones) inside it. Every group gets the same "Max" material, which will then contain Poser materials that (perhaps) aren't actually present in that group. When you attach all the groups into one, and later regroup them, I always suspected Max was adding all these submaterials over and over again, even the unused ones, as when I'm working on a project like Glamorous Jessi the OBJ file gets to huge size, like 30 MB, compared to 9Mb after fixing her (I do try and fix 'em). Other modeling programs might do it too, I suspect, if OBJ isn't their native format. I do know how to fix it though, I'll have to see if MAKEOBJ fixes it also, it might be easier. Incidently, a good test for this would be load it in Poser 4, if the RSR file is much bigger than the OBJ version it is probably fragmented, or has other wastful problems (like too many decimals). Maybe this is why Poser 4 made RSRs? Maybe CL should have kept that in? ;-)

Interesting point about the .rsrs, jim. For my own products, they're usually about 30% smaller, and that seems to be the case for most of the poser stuff and other people's models that I checked. Although, while looking, I did discover a rsr of 19MB for a 960kb obj. LOL. I'm not even sure what the product was, but it must've been corrupt, so I binned it. mac

The ArtemisX suit and other particulars from DAZ caused me the same hang on the "Adding Objects" dialog in both P5 and P6. I could only get the thing to render in the P4 renderer. I ran all the obj files through STOMP...Hallelulah!! It works in Firefly, now. One more save (and a beauty) by the community...

I did discover a rsr of 19MB for a 960kb obj That sort of thing happens when the same faces are in more than one group. In Poser's dialect of .OBJ language, e.g. the line g lForearm Arm Body_ means that the following faces are in group lForearm AND in group Arm AND in group Body_. When the .OBJ file is translated into .RSR mode, the faces involved are duplicated between all the groups that they are in.

"In Poser's dialect of .OBJ language, e.g. the line g lForearm Arm Body_ means that the following faces are in group lForearm AND in group Arm AND in group Body_" Ya know, for years now, I've been interpreting the above type line to mean some form of pseudo sub-group (so most of my programs don't handle this in a Poser-consistent manner, btw). But from some recent work, I see that Poser does seem to allow for polygons to belong to more than one group. I guess I should re-read the .obj file spec again, but I was always under the impression that that wasn't possible. Either way, to handle these files, I'll need to go back and re-work some code paths... . It's interesting that Poser duplicates the polys though... that would seem to me to cause some rendering artifacts (which I can't say that I've noticed).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

It is possible - check the "owl3.obj" if you have it. But only in a sense. You are correct that Poser does not allow polygons to belong to more than one group - i.e.: to be in the 'head' group and 'buttox' group simultaneously. ;) That doesn't mean that there can't be a group hierarchy specified in the OBJ file:

g Body Arm Hand Pinky2

Poser does interpret this! I found out the hard way with that damned owl object file while writing my Wavefront OBJ parsing code. And the order doesn't matter. You can have:

g Body Arm Hand Pinky2 (in one place)

and

g Arm Pinky2 Hand Body (in another)

and the grouping is maintained. ETA: I should specify that only one name should be a qualified Pose name. Note that "Body" and "Arm", as mentioned previously, are not valid Poser body parts (internal naming convention).

Message edited on: 05/05/2005 11:44

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

Ahh, but the way Poser interprets it, is that... g Body f 1 2 3 4 <-- belongs to group 'Body' g Body Arm f 4 5 6 7 <-- belongs to both 'Body' AND 'Arm' groups g Body Arm Hand f 7 8 9 10 <-- belongs to 'Body', 'Arm' AND 'Hand' groups ...in fact, Poser DOES allow a poly to belong to both a 'head' and a 'buttox' group at the same time (logical naming/positions of said groupings aside)... this is a point I was wrong on in the past. You can verify the above using the grouping tool... create a new group, select a poly or two in the head and add them to the group, then select a few in the buttocks and add them to the same group. The polys you put in that group will 'also' still be linked to the head and buttocks groups, as well as being in the new group you created (similar to UV Mapper regions). I might note that this is (going to be) a bear to program for....

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

...(sorry if this is more than some of you want or need to know ;), but for the techies...), just to clarify the above, Poser seems to be tracking and interpreting which 'total set of groups' a poly belongs to, as opposed to which 'group SUBset' a poly belongs to (as some of the group naming used here might imply).

So... poly X could actually exist within the logical 'head' group (say on the tip of the nose), but might also be part of a 'extremeties' group, which also had polys from the fingers and toes in it (for example).

Where this is used most often, WOULD be more as a subset - ie. a Lip or Jaw group, 'contained within' the Head group, to allow you to attatch magnets to that subset grouping for morphing a smile (for example), but I don't believe it's limited to that.

[Edit...] ...obviously, all of the above is only referring to the actual .obj file and how it's formatted. As mentioned above, for Poser to interpret a 'figure' correctly, so it can bend in the right places, etc., at least some of the grouping information (naming, etc) will need to match information im the .cr2 file.

Message edited on: 05/06/2005 03:29

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

But doesn't the grouping tool just create a new instance of "custom geometry" and kinda remove the old geometry? Saved cr2s witht he grouping tool always had custom geom where the grouping tool was used.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I'll have to run some tests to answer more completely, but... You CAN us the grouping tool to 'spawn (new) props', so that would create duplicate geometry, or it might (in the case(s) you're reffering to) replace the external .obj file reference with imbedded geometry (ie. custom geom), but what I've seen in the past was an alteration of the base .obj file when I saved my altered figure. Again, I'm speaking from memory on some of this, so I'll look into it further.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

I know if you make new materials on a figure cr2 it inbeds new geom in the cr2 replacing the original polygons. I huess that was what I meant.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

...Just as an aside, I think we've gotten off-topic a bit from this initial thread/issue (maybe we can start up a new thread in the Poser Tech forum to continue?). Most of this isn't related to the fragmenting issue, but I did want to bring it up so people using my STOMP program would know that they might lose some special grouping information (MOST poser .obj files won't have this type of multi-grouping, though I noticed that some Koz hair props, etc. do and - depending on how the naming is specified/ordered, STOMP may not adversely affect those either).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

If a Poser geometry file contains the lines
g Body Arm Hand Pinky2
f 444 555 666 777
, and you output the posed model as .OBJ, in "output as groups" mode, the resulting output file will contain a face in group Body and another identical face in group Arm and another identical face in group Hand and another identical face in group Pinky2.

Message edited on: 05/06/2005 03:57

I'll definately have to look into this more after I get some sleep. Thanks for the info.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

I have working on a dynamic dress and made several cloth simulations that were going very fast until I finalized the material zones ( since I wanted the users to turn on/off transparenciy for short, elbow and long sleeves). Once I added those materials to the obj, simulation times went to a complete crawl( even with absolutely no texture maps loaded), so much so that I am going back to a single material for that dress.

Dominique Digital Cats Media

...just an update on the 'Silo' front... I just downloaded the latest demo version and while it seems to not create overly fragmented files as it relates to the material records, it does still create terribly bloated .obj files.

The test-case I looked at (less than 5k polygon model) was roughly 30% larger than it needed to be (947k vs 647k), to contain the relevent information needed to store that model. See my posts #58 & #59 above for details.

Message edited on: 05/12/2005 15:41

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Sometimes my math leaves me dangling ;)... here's another way to look at it - if the file could be 600k, but ended up 900k, then it was 1 and a half times as big as it needed to be (600 x 1.5 = 900)... so.. 50% bigger? I need more coffee.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to spanki for STOMP. I have LisaB's vines and it was taking forever for me to get tthrough adding objects before I could even start rendering. Firefly actually died on me twice rendering large. I ran the utility on them and it added the objects in like three seconds. Don't know if the render will still die but at least it doesn't take as long to find out anymore!

Admin: http://www.artistsagainstcensorship.com
Artist: http://www.skyewolfimages.com

Render times... Since I upgraded recently from Win98 to WinXP, without changing the hardware, I've maybe got a feel for one or two details on this. There seem to be two distinct problems with similar symptoms. Both show as very slow, or no, progress at the loading objects stage of the render, which can happen several times if you use shadowmaps. The total halt version (I'd call an overnight run with no results a total halt) seems to have been fixed by the switch to WinXP. I still see very slow processing which may be the fragmented group/material problem, perhaps more often now. Since WinXP uses more RAM for the OS, I'm inclined to think virtual memory is one of the keys. The last instance I hit used DAZ's SP3 and V3; just the two figures each with only one or two INJ morphs loaded. Incidentally, this would be something that would be more likely to show up with a triangulated mesh. Right?

"Incidentally, this would be something that would be more likely to show up with a triangulated mesh. Right?" ...not necessarily, as it really has more to do with which app wrote the .obj file and compounded by how the model was created and/or broken up into material zones, during or after creation and/or wether the mesh was created as all triangles or triangulated later, etc. However, you are correct in the sense that, since a triangulated mesh DOES have twice as many polygons as the same mesh made up from quads, there is certainly more potential for fragmentation.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Yes, I think that was what I was groping for. And more data to shuffle around. I ran yout program over the Aiko3 mesh, and it saved about 380k out of 8400k; maybe not a huge amount but it all helps. The coordinates are given to 8 decimal places, with either a trailing zero or ending 98 or 02. Millionths of an inch, if I have it figured right. I don't think it would make any difference in a close-up, and it might depend on Poser internal data structures, but they used to teach about useless precision at school... Well, my school anyway, but that was a long time ago and in a foreign country, and besides... I did some quick checking, and it doesn't actually make a time difference. One Aiko 3 takes 10 seconds to load objects, two of them take 40 seconds. (Would three take 90 seconds?) Maybe I'm running just inside the limits. Aiko 3 is an awkward figure anyway, since it doesn't use the INJ/REM technology; neither does the Hiro figure. So the .cr2 files get pretty big with all the deltas in them, and they're unimesh figures; it needs just as many deltas as V3/M3. (Checks) A lot of the deltas are in exponent form, which does save a couple of bytes each, but still down to differences of a ten-thousandth of an inch. If these file sizes do matter, there's a lot of scope to trim them back.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=ockham&Topsectionid=0

Ockham's CR2 shortener will be useful if you want to experiment with reducing the precision of your morph deltas. It also removes any deltas which are reduced to 0, 0, 0 and can make a CR2 considerably smaller. It probably doesn't help memory usage much if at all, though.

I think I definitely need more RAM... Anyway, in Poser 5 at least, if you want soft-edged shadows you have to use shadowmaps instead of raytraced shadows. And each shadowmap has a preceding "Adding Objexts" phase. The actual rendering stage is faster with shadowmaps, but if you are getting a sluggish "Adding Objects" you can not only make coffee, you can bake the biscuits.

Yeah. Firefly is building a material database during "adding objects"

If there is fragrmenting is rebuids from scratch with each redundantly tagged material.

Like counting M&M's firefly behaves like this:

1 green
2 red
oops another green

2 green
2 red

oops another 3 red

2 green
5 red

oops another green

3 green
5 red

etc etc

Message edited on: 05/15/2005 08:28

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

.

I downloaded the program but am completely lost. What do I do with it? I get that I "Import" an .obj file, but then what? And what is this about saving? Where do I save it? Do I replace the .obj file in the geometries folder with the new one? I saw something about resaving it with a different name, but wouldn't that cause problems with the rest of the package and it's files?

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Attached Link: http://www.byanton.com

1)Load obj 2)Save obj 3)Use this setup You do replace the obj. Make a backup of the original incase you have problems or saved wrong.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Ahhh, that explains it. As per advice from another thread, I saved it to the same folder using the same name but put a number 1 at the end. When I rendered I didn't notice any change in render time at all, so it must have been utilizing the original .obj file and not the processed "stomp" version of it. I'll try again later by removing the original object file and renaming the processed one to that of the original name and see if that improves things. Thanks :) If this speeds up my rendering times, I'll be using it for all of my .obj files because patience isn't exactly one of my virtues. lol

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I went back and deleted the files that I saved with a number 1 at the end. I then copied the original object files to another folder outside of the runtime. Using Stomp, I processed the original object files in the folder and replaced them with the new exported one when I saved it. So I started with 4 object files in the folder and ended with 4 object files in the folder, plus the .mtl files that were generated. I opened Poser and the figure was nude. The outfits were listed in the menu but weren't showing up on the figure. I deleted them and reapplied them from the library with the same result. The clothing is listed in the drop down menu, but the figure is nude. Help? lol

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Whatversion of Poser are you using?

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Sheesh! I got down to post 130, and had to back out of the thread, it was doing my (what is optimisticly called a) brain in! I understand most of what's being discussed, and where and why it matters, and how to fix it the problem. But as I mentally tried to apply the fixes to my own files, I got more and more cross-eyed... (very long bookmark for very long thread..) :-)) Cheers, Diolma

I'm using Poser 5. What I did was as follows: Copy the .obj files from the runtime folder to another folder for safe keeping. 1. Open STOMP 2. File, Import Mesh/obj, Browse to the runtime folder that contains the geometry .obj files that I want to process. 3. File, Export the files back to that runtime geometry folder and use the SAME name as the ones already there... replacing them with the new processed .obj files. Then I open Poser. Load my figure, then add the clothing. The clothing is listed in the drop down menu as being there. But they aren't visible on the figure. If I go to the folder where I saved the original geometry files for safe keeping, and copy them back to the runtime geometry folder, then go into Poser and delete the invisible clothes and reapply them from the library again, the clothing is not only in the drop down menu, but also visible on the figure. It's wierd. I think I did everything as indicated. I export as "material" like in the instruction window above, and all the right boxes are checked according to that instruction screenshot above. But for some reason the clothing and shoes are invisible after running it through STOMP.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

• Which clothes and shoes are you running through stomp? - What's the size of the original .obj file(s)? - What's the size of the STOMPed ones?

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=36619

The link leads to the character and items I am having trouble rendering. The object file sizes are as follows: BEFORE: Pantie: 8,906 KB ShoeL : 2,797 KB ShoeR : 2,822 KB Top: 12,703 KB AFTER RUNNING THROUGH STOMP: Pantie: 10,103 KB ShoeL : 3,169 KB ShoeR : 3,193 KB Top: 14,337 KB Plus there are 4 .mtl files, each 1 KB in size.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Eternl_Knight I think you mentioned a python script earlier in this thread ? Any update on that ?

Eternal Hobbyist

 

Arcadia, Try running it through and check group instead, and save Then reload and saving checking material.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Arcadia, Try running it through and check group instead, and save Then reload and saving checking material.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Anton, I tried what you suggested. I'm not sure of the rational behind it though because running it through a second time just overwrites the first runthrough.

Anyway, here is what I did this time after I copied the original .obj files back to the geometry runtime and deleted the 4 .mtl files there.

Import Mesh .obj
Export Mesh .obj
Save and let it overwrite the original file by using the same name.
The following boxes had checkmarks next to them:

Export UV Co-ords
Export Faces
Export Group Names
Export materials
Export .mtl files
By Group
File Name Only

I did that for each of the 4 .obj files (top, panties, L shoe, R shoe).

Then I did it again, this time instead of having "By Group" checked, I had a check mark next to "By Material". Again I let it save by the original file name.

The result was 4 .obj files the same size as I listed earlier. Plus 4 .mtl files.

I went into Poser and loaded the figure and applied each of the clothing items from the clothing library. Once again the clothing shows below the pose room window, but the figure is nude.

I've attached a screenshot of my poser window after having applied the clothing. As you can see the top is listed in the drop down window, plus it's showing as "visible" in the properties window, but it's invisible on the figure. According to Poser the clothing is there, because I can even conform them to the figure. I did a draft test render to see and there is no clothing on the rendered image.

Also, see that little black spot below the toes of the the left foot (the right one when looking at the figure on your screen)? That appeared when I applied the shoe for the left foot. But that's all that appeared.

Message edited on: 07/18/2005 05:58

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

I 'm not sure why you are expoorting mtls. I would uncheck that one. If you are using P4 or Procka delete the .rsrs in the geomtries folder for these ites. Close Poser and restart. Figures with ERC can cause a anomoly where if you add/delete several times, your scene becomes corrupted and things load invisible. Do all this in a fresh Poser scene. If all else fails, just reinstall the original product.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I 'm not sure why you are expoorting mtls. I would uncheck that one. If you are using P4 or Procka delete the .rsrs in the geomtries folder for these ites. Close Poser and restart. Figures with ERC can cause a anomoly where if you add/delete several times, your scene becomes corrupted and things load invisible. Do all this in a fresh Poser scene. If all else fails, just reinstall the original product.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

I didn't find the answer with STOMP, because the clothing became invisible after processing the .obj files through it. However, your advice on adding a hard carriage return to the end of the text in the .obj file reduced my render time by more than 1/3 of what it was.... or is that 2/3'rds? Anyway, I went from almost 3 hours rendering, to 50 minutes, using the same light, hair etc. I will keep STOMP around and try it out on other things, it just might be something with these particular .obj files for some strange reason. Thanks again for your time and patience for helping me off board like you did.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

"...it just might be something with these particular .obj files for some strange reason" If I had to guess (and not having the files to look at... I do), it's probably a problem in parsing the 'group' records in the file. If you have the original file up in a text editor, search on "g " (a 'g' followed by a space). Each of those starts/defines a named 'group' of facets. Some applications write out group records in a way that STOMP doesn't read correctly. For example... here's a made up, but likely situation: g figure1 head f x x x f x x x g figure1 neck f x x x f x x x g figure1 chest f x x x f x x x ...I think STOMP would combine all of these into the 'figure1' group, so you'd lose the head/neck/chest sub-groupings (it's been a while since I looked, so I'd have to check to make sure). This gets back to something we were discussing above (starting at about post #122).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

The only text editor I have is NotePad, and I don't think you can search in that one. I scanned the long list and the only letters I see in there are: v vt f I don't see anything with the letter g preceding it and though I may have missed it, I didn't see anything indicating specific body areas like head, chest, neck etc.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

.

PoserPro 2014, Windows 7, AMD FX-6300 6 core, 8 GB ram, Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti

Update: With Sr1 and sr2 this issue has been diminished, but it is still existent in P5 and I haven't tested much yet in sr2. Creators should still run their obj files through Stomp.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Stomp doesn't work for me. I've tried it a few times on other clothing items, and the clothing ends up "invisible" but listed in the menu.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

well that is a new one. This is what your save options should look like. SOunds like you uncheck faces.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

AS you can see is can vastly reduce fragmented mtl statements.

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

It might reduce mtl files if you can get it to work, but I followed your instructions in Post #144 above and despite having done that, each time I've tried it the clothing is invisible on the figure even though it's not "invisible" in the parameter dials, and shows up in the drop down menu. It's wierd.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Stomp doesn't have the ability to do what you described, unless you accidentlt checked the wrong thing If you follow the checkboxes above you shouldn't have any problems. You should try again. btw: what version of Poser are you using

-Anton, creator of Apollo Maximus
"Conviction without truth is denial; Denial in the face of truth is concealment."

Over 100,000 Downloads....

Another thing affecting size of .OBJ files, is the firmat used to print coordinate numbers: how many decimal places, and whether they are always printed as floating-point even where not necessary.

Another thing affecting size of .OBJ files, is the firmat used to print coordinate numbers: how many decimal places...

Yeah, I'd planned to add some options for decimal places in the future.

Acadia,

The only text editor I have is NotePad, and I don't think you can search in that one...

Notepad, Edit menu, "Find..." option. Search for "g " (the letter 'g' + a space, or just the letter 'g', by otself). If you don't find any group records, Poser doesn't know what mesh to display for a particular named group in the .cr2 file, so the figure gets loaded, but without any mesh (invisible). If this is the case before STOMP, then STOMP is not doing it. If this is the case after STOMP, then either you don't have the "Export Group Names" option checked (see image in post #164, above) or, the problem is related to my post #159, above.

I suspect that this only happens with 'some' .obj files... ones that have the issue listed in post #159 above.

Message edited on: 11/17/2005 01:06

Message edited on: 11/17/2005 01:07

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Just wanted to say thank you once again, You're definately a life saver!

Admin: http://www.artistsagainstcensorship.com
Artist: http://www.skyewolfimages.com

Okay, this sounds interesting and reasonable... I am one of those lucky people who rarely have the render slowdown on Adding Objects (Also running an AMD). My hand up is Shadows and Rendering strand Hair. I would like to ask a question.. what do you use other than Notepad to look at the CR2's? I noticed in Notepad that there is no line-ation (distinct lines with a beginning and end) I have noticed this in several Tutorials or other tips for Editing Poser Files, but mine ar never in that neat of an order when viewed with Notepad.

ratscloset
aka John

Attached Link: http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

If you must use Notepad, then make sure word wrap is off (Format menu). Better, use a dedicated text editor. I use Crimson Editor which is free.

Attached Link: http://www.textpad.com

Or, for about $30, TextPad is a very nice editor(shareware, working eval version available).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Yeah, I have Word Wrap off... it seems it just is the files. Not all of them are like this, but most are. I will look at them in Crimson Editor. What makes it this hard is when they tell you to Find something and then delete the whole line... I am never sure where the line ends sometimes, unless they tell what the next line begins with.

ratscloset
aka John

It used to be a problem that Apple Macs, Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft, used different markers of the end-of-line. As I recall, you could get your problem when you read a Mac-format text file in Windows Notepad.

Crimson Editor looks worth checking out. I see that it has syntax highlighting that can be set up for a particular language with a config file. Has anyone done this for the CR2 format? I know there are dedicated Poser editors, but this looks to be more general-purpose.

It seems that my problems with that outfit were isolated to that one outfit for some weird reason.  STOMP has become a program that I find absolutely essential to have.

Thanks Spanki  :)

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Will this work on a Mac?

Quote - Will this work on a Mac?

It's written for PC only.  I don't know if it would run under some sort of PC emulator or not (it uses OpenGL for the model viewer).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Quote - Anton, Try it both ways (by group and by material) - see which works best. Mac, I initially wrote the program to generate 'smoothed' normals between disconnected body parts (to keep seams from showing up in other apps). That function is still there, but the features expanded to allow me to fix other problems with .obj files produced by other apps ;). The only caveat is... I wrote this thing back in 2002 and I hadn't looked much at the code since then, so it may be slow in some areas, or may just crash on some files (?). There is a spec for the .obj file format available, but it is apparently open to a lot of interpretation (based on some of the .obj file output I've seen), so my program may choke on some files, from some programs. My Riptide plugin for C4D re-uses a lot of that code, but I did clean it up and bullet-proof it more - which is why I mentioned that it was more robust. As far as whether anything else gets changed... no, nothing of concequence (the comments change, uv-mapper regions are lost (but retained in the plugin version) but the vertex orders are not changed or anything like that). You CAN change some other things using the program, like consolodating UV vertices, flipping (mirroring) the model, etc.

Wow. I just stumbled across this thread, and it's so true! I'm having the worst problems with junked up objs.  I would love to fix them. 

Thanks, Spanki! You Da Man!

bB

would love this but where do i get it?:P can't find a download link :)