Hi everybody,

I have recently bought poser 5, expecting to export the poser figures to lightwave with their animations. Yet it seems to be doing only half of it.

I can indeed export the 3D model (as an OBJ better than LWO) as well as animations (as BVH files), separately, but :

• first : I have to bone the animation to the mesh
• worse : I also have to rebuild the model weight map which plays a key role in the way the mesh smoothly follows the BVH movement.

I had initially read that poser 5 could export its models and animations in the same way as pro pack 4. Unfortunately, I did not pay attention to this : the poser plugin in Lightwave that can read a PZ file has not been reconducted for poser 5. And it seems that only this special plugin knows how to export a model with its animation attached.

Will I really have to bone my model and rebuild an entire weightmap for my poser exported model (from fingers to toes) or does someone know anything I could do avoid this "tedious" work?

I will sincerely appreciate any suggestion

Cheers

Yes, Curious Labs had initially said that the Poser 2 Lighwave plugin for Poser 5 would be developed "later". Considering all the work they still have to do on Poser 5, later could be a very long time from now (if ever). The only way to avoid the work would be to go back to Poser 4 Propack at this point. Either that or write your own plugin. *8-)

Now suppose that, without the plugin, I would like to reproduce with Lightwave weight maps the poser smooth muscle movement. 1 - Is it technically possible starting from an exported file? (LW or OBJ for instance). 2 - Is it easily done in a few days by some amateur with a good understanding of weight maps and a bunch of patience? 3 - Is it only done by experienced animators spending weeks on it? 4 - Is there a solution using some special tool? 5 - Could Curious Lab provide its clients with a fully boned and wight mapped model for Lightwave and other 3D packages? There must be some kind of solution...

You could export the Poser model create weight maps for the left side of the model, theres a plugin that will create the right side weight maps for you. I cant remember the name of the lightwave plugin but if you go to Flay.com you should be able to find it in the plugins section.

Most of the models you are interested in are probably from DAZ3D (Victoria, Posette, Michael, Dork) and DAZ has an agreement with Zygote saying that they will not develop Lightwave content. So that's out. It's not really that hard to do weight maps and there are some good tutorials on newtek's site. You'll be able to do it in a few days. Another alternative is to do one and get a group of LWers to do one each and everyone swap :) Also check out the free stuff at DAZ3D.com they have some excellent plugins for getting your MorphTargets into LW.

Attached Link: http://www.vmall.ne.jp/~yoichiro/program/mirror_wgt/index.html

I indeed found the mirror weight plugin (actually in a post to Renderosity LW Forum) : it can be found via the attached link

This already saves me 50% of the work! ;-)

Now, if anyone is interested by jamball77's suggestion (build the map collectively) please contact me.

In the meantime, I will try to start the job on my own and see if the result is worth it...

Cheers.