Hi All, This has probably been asked before, but here goes again. I want to animate in Poser and render in Max. Q: Is there a way to make Poser export a single texture map for my model? My goal is to export the entire rig as a single mesh. This way Max only has to deal with the final mesh, not lots of groups of meshes. Basically I need an unwrap in Poser for the entire figure with its props and clothing. Am I asking too much? Thanks Enivob

Animate in Poser, render in Max. The only way to do that without rebuilding the whole bone system and animztion in Max would be using the Poser to Max plugin that comes with Poser Pro pack, or purchasing Reiss BodyStudio if you're using Poser 5 or 6 (the ProPack plugin won't work with Poser 5/6).
Both the ProPack plugin and Reiss BodyStudio should take care of the texturing nicely.

If you export as .obj, you have the option to weld vertices. That'll reduce the amount of meshes you're going to import into Max. If you run the .obj file to the Grouper utility, you can get rid of duplicate materials (SkinTorso, SkinHip, SkinArm and so on often have exactly the same material settings, and can be consolidated into a single material).

Grouper is a freebie here on 'rosity. Brycers often use it for Poser exports.

Oh, and you'll probably need a .OBJ importer for Max. Versions 4 thru 6 of Max do not import Wavefront .OBJ files. HABWare has free .OBJ import and export plugins for Max.

Another thing, Poser scale is tiny compared to Max scale. When importing you'll want to scale up the Poser figure by a factor of 250, then a human figure will be about 6 feet tall in the Max universe. You COULD get everything on a single texture map using UVMapper on the exported object. I wouldn't advise it though. Toe resulting texture map must be huge to retain any detail. You're better off using multi-material meshes.

Message edited on: 12/12/2005 19:15

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. I need a single texture for a single mesh out of poser.

UVMapper. And stitching the separate maps together using Photoshop or something like that. I can't understand why you would want to do that, it's a royal pain.

Right, I want all that to be done automatically. It is easier to render a single mesh with a single texture in Max than to have to link up all those missing textures from the MTL file to the individual meshes that come in as a group. Basically I need a boolean ADD in Poser to add all the clothing, hair, shoes and props into a single mesh while still maintaining their individual textures. At that point, Poser should export that mesh as a 3DS with a single bitmap that encompases all the materials from the figure, conforming figures and props. All from one button push. Crack!

"... Poser should export that mesh as a 3DS ..."
3DS export from Poser is limited to 64K polygons, so unless your scene is not complex you'll need to export an OBJ.
For comparison DAZ's Unimesh figures have approx. 74K polygons.

Poser can't do that. You'll need a 2D app like Photoshop to combine the textures. And then you'll have to remap the object so that the textures fit. That is much more work than linking up missing textures. There are some utilities out there that can scan a .pz3 or .mtl for maps and copy those over to a single directory. Makes the linking a lot easier. I wrote a little VB app a year or so ago to do just that. I'll see if I can find it, I don't use it anymore.

Enivob, >> Am I asking too much? In a word, "Yes". What may not be apparent to you is that on a typical Poser figure, those texture maps 'overlap' one-another. The Body texture takes up the 'whole' map. So does the Head texture. So does the eyebrows/eyelashes/pubichair. In order to have all the textures on one map, you'd have to change the UV coordinates of the mesh itself (as svdl is trying to tell you above). If you also have clothing on the mesh, you'd also have to make room for all of THOSE textures on that one map. Because of this (and the arbitrary nature of how it's actually implemented), it would be extremely difficult to automate this process using software (the software can't readily know off-hand 'which' materials belonged to the same UV template.. you'd have to devise some means of hinting or specifying it). You'd also lose all the advantages of using several textures (each texture can be it's own resolution). In short, while it might seem like a good idea to help make things 'easy' for you, it would be a terrible idea in most cases, in practice.

I have worked out a system. I export all meshes into a single 3DS file. I then have a single sub-material that I can apply to the entire mesh after import. With the help of maxscripting, I have been able to extend 3DS Max's ability to handle large frame count animation, treeting it more like 3D footage. I have broken the 100 frame morph channel barrier that is inherent in 3DSMax. I copy all the poser texture maps into the same folder that has the exported 3DS sequence. Max is fairly smart about finding what it can. Then I finalize the texture manually.I can work on texturing a single frame of the animation and then apply it to whatever frame I like on the fly via maxscript. One button would still be nice...