Hey there =)

Ok... a long time since I done any POV-Ray stuff. Finally got back into
it lately with a school project where we were supposed to do a
"Production Logo" in a program called Logomotion, but it couldn't do
what I wanted, so I did the animating in POV-Ray. Am happy with the
results.. will have to upload it to my site eventually...

But anyways, another assignment involved poser, and Poser4 is on all the
computers in the school's lab. My previous experiance of seeing Poser
models in stuff like IRTC entries really hadn't impressed me a huge
amount...

But then I started looking around the internet, and found a bunch of
sites devoted to poser, and especially the gallery of that Poser Online
Forum page... I mean some of the pictures it really was hard to tell
that they were computer generated...

Of course while Poser can render stuff itself, it isn't really designed
to be a big full-featured type of thing, and I am much more used to
POV-Ray for doing stuff than something like Bryce, Ray Dream Studio,
3DMax, etc. etc.

So, in the documentation in relating to bringing Poser models into those
programs, it looked like the main method was exporting to OBJ files, and
then UV mapping the person's body texture onto it.

So, basically my main question is have people had luck trying to get
this to work with POV-Ray? It looks like it exports to OBJ, 3DS,
Detailer, RIB, Wavefront, 3DMF, VRML/H-Anim, and DXF.

So, I guess the two-part thing is which way have people found the best
to get the model itself into POV-Ray, and (reason I am posting to this
group), how the mapping has worked in terms of the UV Patch... And I
guess while I'm at it, also any of the bump-mapping. Hmmm.. would that
be a UV Mapped Bump Map? Is that even possible in the patch? =)

I know I should do more research on my own, but I am dying with
bazillions of projects hanging over my head. So just curious what
others' experiances have been...

Thanks =)
Shawn

Post a reply to this message

Hi,

i suggest to export to obj and use 3dto3d V4 beta at
www.stmuc.com/thbaier


-tb

>Hey there =)
>
>Ok... a long time since I done any POV-Ray stuff. Finally got back into
>it lately with a school project where we were supposed to do a
>"Production Logo" in a program called Logomotion, but it couldn't do
>what I wanted, so I did the animating in POV-Ray. Am happy with the
>results.. will have to upload it to my site eventually...
>
>But anyways, another assignment involved poser, and Poser4 is on all the
>computers in the school's lab. My previous experiance of seeing Poser
>models in stuff like IRTC entries really hadn't impressed me a huge
>amount...
>
>But then I started looking around the internet, and found a bunch of
>sites devoted to poser, and especially the gallery of that Poser Online
>Forum page... I mean some of the pictures it really was hard to tell
>that they were computer generated...
>
>Of course while Poser can render stuff itself, it isn't really designed
>to be a big full-featured type of thing, and I am much more used to
>POV-Ray for doing stuff than something like Bryce, Ray Dream Studio,
>3DMax, etc. etc.
>
>So, in the documentation in relating to bringing Poser models into those
>programs, it looked like the main method was exporting to OBJ files, and
>then UV mapping the person's body texture onto it.
>
>So, basically my main question is have people had luck trying to get
>this to work with POV-Ray? It looks like it exports to OBJ, 3DS,
>Detailer, RIB, Wavefront, 3DMF, VRML/H-Anim, and DXF.
>
>So, I guess the two-part thing is which way have people found the best
>to get the model itself into POV-Ray, and (reason I am posting to this
>group), how the mapping has worked in terms of the UV Patch... And I
>guess while I'm at it, also any of the bump-mapping. Hmmm.. would that
>be a UV Mapped Bump Map? Is that even possible in the patch? =)
>
>I know I should do more research on my own, but I am dying with
>bazillions of projects hanging over my head. So just curious what
>others' experiances have been...
>
>Thanks =)
>Shawn

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 03 Nov 1999 22:17:21 -0500, Shawn Fumo <sha### [at] the-spacom>
wrote:

>So, in the documentation in relating to bringing Poser models into those
>programs, it looked like the main method was exporting to OBJ files, and
>then UV mapping the person's body texture onto it.

  Shawn, you may want to read Gilles Tran's 27-Aug-1999 post, "Eve's First
morning 0/1", in p.binaries.images. Details how he imported Poser models
into his POV-Ray-rendered image. Check out the higher resolution (and later)
binary that Gilles posted, so you can see how it turned out. Very nice, IMO.

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

Post a reply to this message

Shawn Fumo wrote:
> 
> Hey there =)

Hey !
 
> Ok... a long time since I done any POV-Ray stuff.

That is an understatement :)

> I know I should do more research on my own,

 There has been a recent rash of conversion utilities to ease the pain of the
UV coordinate mapping. Thomas posted a link to his utility so I won't duplicate
that.

There is a another new conversion utility by Cliff Bowman for converting
Poser obj to UVPov at:

http://www.who3d.cwc.net/Models.html

And yet another that just was released at:

http://home.HiWAAY.net/~ssloan/software/

Also see:

http://www.warmann.com/users/broken/utils/utils.html

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

Post a reply to this message

Thomas Baier, Ken Tyler and Alan Kong have always given you good hints about
how to do this, so here are just a few more details about the procedure.
- there are two mesh formats in the Superpatch/UVPov that support
uv-mapping. I personally prefer mesh2 because of the smaller file size and
faster parsing time, but not all converters support it. My favorite
converter is 3DS2POV (from Thomas Baier) because it has a nice GUI.
- the two preferred export formats are OBJ and 3DS. There are serious bugs
in the 3DS export plugin of Poser (parts are forgotten or distorted...). If
you want to use this format, you can overcome the bug by exporting first to
OBJ, loading the OBJ format into Poser and exporting it again, as 3DS this
time. Stupid, but it works. Same sort of trick can be used with some wrong
geometries found on the Poserforum.
- there are sometimes problems in image maps that look all wrong when mapped
on the final povray model. Try to turn the map upside down.
- bump mapping works fine. The bump maps in Poser have a mysterious BUM
extension but they are only BMP files (at least in the Windows version).
Just rename them to BMP and convert them to a povray-compatible format. You
may have to edit them too to increase bumpiness, otherwise it's perfect. You
can use alpha-channels for transparency too.

Gilles

Shawn Fumo wrote:

> So, basically my main question is have people had luck trying to get
> this to work with POV-Ray? It looks like it exports to OBJ, 3DS,
> Detailer, RIB, Wavefront, 3DMF, VRML/H-Anim, and DXF.
>
> So, I guess the two-part thing is which way have people found the best
> to get the model itself into POV-Ray, and (reason I am posting to this
> group), how the mapping has worked in terms of the UV Patch... And I
> guess while I'm at it, also any of the bump-mapping. Hmmm.. would that
> be a UV Mapped Bump Map? Is that even possible in the patch? =)
>
> I know I should do more research on my own, but I am dying with
> bazillions of projects hanging over my head. So just curious what
> others' experiances have been...
>
> Thanks =)
> Shawn

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 04 Nov 1999 16:30:53 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:
>- bump mapping works fine. The bump maps in Poser have a mysterious BUM
>extension but they are only BMP files (at least in the Windows version).
>Just rename them to BMP and convert them to a povray-compatible format. You
>may have to edit them too to increase bumpiness, otherwise it's perfect. You
>can use alpha-channels for transparency too.

BMP is a povray-compatible format if you're using the Windows version.  Just
use "sys" where you'd usually use "tga" or "png" in the POV code.

-- 
These are my opinions.  I do NOT speak for the POV-Team.
The superpatch: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/superpatch/
My other stuff: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html

Post a reply to this message

Oops you're right of course. It's just that some of the bump maps offered with
Poser are very large uncompressed BMPs so that I'm used to convert them to GIF or
PNG without even thinking.
G.

Ron Parker wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Nov 1999 16:30:53 +0100, Gilles Tran wrote:
> >- bump mapping works fine. The bump maps in Poser have a mysterious BUM
> >extension but they are only BMP files (at least in the Windows version).
> >Just rename them to BMP and convert them to a povray-compatible format. You
> >may have to edit them too to increase bumpiness, otherwise it's perfect. You
> >can use alpha-channels for transparency too.
>
> BMP is a povray-compatible format if you're using the Windows version.  Just
> use "sys" where you'd usually use "tga" or "png" in the POV code.
>
> --
> These are my opinions.  I do NOT speak for the POV-Team.
> The superpatch: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/superpatch/
> My other stuff: http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html

Post a reply to this message