Import from Poser?

[ajpen]

Hiya

 

I am experimenting with the trial version of Poser and every time I try to import the OBJ that it generates, I get an error message that says each texture cannot be imported.

 

Anyone else try this workflow? 3D figures in VWX are a joke, between the Vision legacy figures, the useless legacy Human Figure tool, etc. 

 

Just want to be able to pose my figure and have textures map properly.

 

Some of the posts regarding 3D humans in VWX are twenty years old. Nothing ever seems to get done about it...

 

Image Props are not suitable. I want real 3D that is posable and looks better than the low polygon "people" i drew for myself 5 years ago. Changing a pose is incredibly tedious in VWX with the symbol build as groups of tapered extrudes, etc.

 

Any help would be great. 21 days left in trial of Poser...

 

peace

aj

 

[Jeff Prince]

@ajpen your texture issues might be resolved by taking a peak at the .mtl file and see if the name and path are correct.

if you stick the .obj, .mtl, and image files in the same folder, it should work.

[ajpen]

Wow. Your suggestion was on the right track... i was exporting in to Dropbox and trying to open on a different computer, and the paths didn't match.

 

Then I tried exporting to a stick. Different drive names between two computers, visible in the MTL file so i search/replaced F:\ with D:\ - still no go.

 

Then I tried on the local drive of the same computer. Still no go.

 

Then I had a look at the .png files that Poser exports and realized that the filenames had no .png extension, and Vectorworks was naming the files it couldn't import so I tried appending .png to the texture files and... still no go.

 

Finally, I had a look at the .png files themselves... Windows Photos couldn't open them. Neither could Photoshop.

 

So there's the problem. Maybe it's a limitation of the trial version? I'll look in to that. Couldn't find much on YouTube or otherwise regarding export from Poser to OBJ. The reference manual is quite thin there too. Frustrating.

 

Maybe Poser isn't the answer, but i can pose the arms of the default model as if they were holding a guitar in about 30sec. Very intuitive.

 

Anyone else feel like banging their head on this one?

 

peace

aj

 

[mjm]

1 hour ago, ajpen said:

Wow. Your suggestion was on the right track... i was exporting in to Dropbox and trying to open on a different computer, and the paths didn't match.

 

Then I tried exporting to a stick. Different drive names between two computers, visible in the MTL file so i search/replaced F:\ with D:\ - still no go.

 

Then I tried on the local drive of the same computer. Still no go.

 

Then I had a look at the .png files that Poser exports and realized that the filenames had no .png extension, and Vectorworks was naming the files it couldn't import so I tried appending .png to the texture files and... still no go.

 

Finally, I had a look at the .png files themselves... Windows Photos couldn't open them. Neither could Photoshop.

 

So there's the problem. Maybe it's a limitation of the trial version? I'll look in to that. Couldn't find much on YouTube or otherwise regarding export from Poser to OBJ. The reference manual is quite thin there too. Frustrating.

 

Maybe Poser isn't the answer, but i can pose the arms of the default model as if they were holding a guitar in about 30sec. Very intuitive.

 

Anyone else feel like banging their head on this one?

 

peace

aj

 

@ajpenDoes this answer your basic query:

[ajpen]

@mjm Below is a screenshot of the message i get every time i try to import. I have tried checking and unchecking the various Import Materials options in Vectorworks to no avail. Same result each time. If the "Import Materials" is unchecked altogether, there is no error message but of course there is no texture import.

 

I ran the "uncompress" script. No change. I looked at the Save Files Compressed option in Poser (at least i found a "Use File Compression" option under "Save Files") and tried different combinations there... no change.

 

Poser 11 is still generating image files that can't be read. If they're still being compressed as you suggest, i can't find a way to stop that.

 

@mjm , @jeff prince ... Your suggestions are quite informative and I thank you! However I think it has to do with the texture files Poser is generating and I can't find the option that would modify those results. Again, the reference manual and YouTube videos regarding export to OBJ or other formats seems to be very thin...

 

[Jeff Prince]

@ajpen you need to figure out where poser is exporting your textures or how to tell poser to extract your textures as individual files.  This is not a Vectorworks problem.  Once you have your texture files, make sure they are named the same as in the .mtl file.  Then, stick the obj, mtl, and textures in a single folder.  The model should then come into Vectorworks textures correctly.

[ajpen]

@jeff prince Thank you Jeff, and I appreciate this. But if you look at my first reply you will see that i did everything you originally suggested.

 

I understand at this point that this is not a Vectorworks problem.

 

I can plainly see where Poser is exporting the files. Everything is in the same folder, and the .mtl file clearly refers to the correct path for each image file. However if you refer to my post you will see that I discovered that the .png files that Poser generates are not valid or readable by any application.

 

I don't think that Vectorworks is having any trouble finding the files, just in reading them. 

 

Definitely a Poser problem... I guess it's outside of the purview of the Vectorworks forum. Thanks for responding!!

 

peace

aj

 

[ajpen]

@jeff prince AHA!!!

 

I created my own texture. Just grabbed a random texture from my archives and saved it as a .png with the same filename as the Poser texture that was imported. Didn't even check to see about dimensions... VWX didn't care as long as it was finding an actual .png as expected.

 

This is a bit of an obscure workaround, but it does the trick. Maybe i'll get a whole bunch of figures exported in this manner before my trial period runs out... Not sure i want to spend $200 on this headache from Poser. But again, maybe someone in a Poser forum might help, although searches of their knowledgebase are fruitless and web searches lead to the uber-nerds (i say with respect and affection) in Reddit, Github, etc.

 

Thanks very much @jeff prince and@mjm !

 

peace

aj

 

[Jeff Prince]

@ajpen Always a good idea to keep your textures handy from this process, you never know what Vectorworks might do to them when you export again to a differnet format...

 

 

[grant_PD]

Have you tried searching for figures on a site like TurboSquid?  You can get quite a variety of poses and people, and most are downloadable as an .obj file.  They will import pretty nicely into VW.  

[ajpen]

@grant_PD I have searched high and low on TurboSquid, 3D Warehouse, etc. for posed musicians and there is not much to choose from. I wanted to make my own bespoke figures and come up with a solution to pose them on a case by case basis.

 

I ended up going with Poser now that I have a workflow that serves my purpose. Until I get in to complex characters it's not too much of a problem to replace the textures as I described above. I'll keep trying to figure out why the textures don't export correctly from Poser, but that's not a VWX problem. 

 

The user interface for posing figures in Poser is a lot of fun!