Let's say I want to make a morphing prop of an office chair that goes up and down. I also want the base to look metallic, so I want a different material for it. I make the chair in my 3D modeller, making sure the base and seat have different materials. Export as obj and import into Poser. Now I shorten the stem of the base to create the "down" morph. Export to obj. But Poser will not accept this as a morph target, claiming it has the wrong number of vertices (when in fact it has exactly the same number). The error message is misleading - the real reason is that Poser doesn't like the different meshes it sees when it sees more than one material. So I can fix this by doing a join in the original model - but then I lose the material divisions. I can see two ways round this. One is to import a single mesh into Poser and then, when the morphs have been added, assign the different materials using the grouping tool, but this tool is so user-hostile that this is near-impossible to do accurately if the model is complex. The other is to make a texture map of the whole mesh and colour different bits as required. But this is limited - I can't then, say, put a reflection map on only the metal bits. Is there a better solution that I'm missing?

I don't know if it's better, but you can also try this: 1. Prepare the chair in your modeller in morphed and unmorphed form. 2. Export the chair and morphs from your modeller, as before. 3. Import the unmorphed chair to Poser with no options selected. If you try importing it with the usual options selected, it may not accept morphs, unless both it and the morphs were exported from Poser first. 4. Apply the morph(s) and give them good names. Resize or scale the chair as needed (assuming the chair is still a single object). 5. Save as pp2 file (add to Props library). The part about the material names should be less of a problem, as long as you have UVMapper (or even the Grouping Tool) available to ensure correct naming. Just make sure that you don't use special characters like spaces, and you don't have conflicts between group or materials names. It should be a breeze if you've already selected the groups accurately in your modeller, and they don't have Poser-unfriendly material names.

I believe as mentioned by nyar1ath0tep that you need to export from poser and morph that. I had the same problem in Rhino and it never worked until I exported from Poser back into Rhino. The obj was turned on its axis when exported. So I suppose thats why the morphs had not been working.

That is exactly right. And UVMapper will solve the problem of deviding the materials (ie: Select by group, select by material) I can never get morphs to work unless I export it from and back to Poser.

Now, I did export from Poser before making the morphed version, exactly as suggested, but it still didn't work. Do you have to export the morphed versions from Poser as well? I didn't try using UVmapper - what stage do you apply it?

When you exported from Poser did you export as Morph target. When exporting your morphed version out of your modeler did you make sure that there were no options checked that would transform postion. Like Y up etc. This will blow Posers mind.

No, nothing like that. Because what I did works perfectly if there is only one material on the mesh, and doesn't work if there is more than one material, so it's ONLY the number of materials that is causing the problem.

Ok I believe I figured it out. I went and experimented. I don't think your problem is coming from multiple materials but from multiple sub-objects. At least that is what caused my problems. Here is the solution that worked for me. Before importing to Poser,bring your object into uvmapper, assign materials and then export the model with the "export as single group" checked". This will weld the whole thing together but leave you with your multiple materials. This object should be morphable. I hope this helps you.

Aha, that sounds perfect. I'll try it out. Many thanks.

Let me know if it works. You've got me curious now. :)

If you shorten the stem by cutting the mesh you will alter the number vertices and cause Poser not to accept it. If you move the chair and stem up and down in the base without moving the base, it will work. Make the seat and stem one part and the base another. Put the two parts together, scale it how you want the final to be(in zero position) and export. Move the seat up and export, move the seat down and export. Bring the zero position version into poser with all boxes unchecked and add the other two exports as the morphs. -JH.