I'm going nuts! I've done this before with no problem. I don't understand what's wrong now. I've exported a relatively complicated OBJ from Poser 5. 3 figures, a prop temple and some accessory figures attached (i.e. clothes and hair). I've taken the obj through Grouper to match up the texture maps. Then I import the OBJ into a Carrera scene and when I try to save I get the "An unknown error has occurred during save". Let's see, what other information might help? Carrera 2.1, just updated. Windows XP. 1GB of RAM. 1.4 AMD. My swap drive for Carrera is 4 GB alone and my Windows pf is on a 100GB hard drive. Any ideas?

My idea would be to try saving one item at a time until you hit the bad obj. I believe Carrara uses about 30 MB per Poser figure when imported as facet meshes, but it might be 60 MB (or more) per figure when imported as vertex object. So even 1 GB might not be enough to handle (and save) the entire scene as vertex objects, especially if you're using some of those big 3000X3000 Poser textures, saved internally. There is also a known bug where Carrara renames Poser materials as lists of numbers upon saving, but I don't know if that applies to you.

JetM, I've never tried to import more than one character at a time into C2 but ... Just guessing It might also be a missing file in Poser. I don't know if correct reference works with P5 as I haven't tried it in P5 yet, but either way you should check for misreferenced files in Poser. also I don't know enough off hand about Grouper to state if it actually checks to see if the bitmap references it corrects are physically there or not. There is something about options when exporting from Poser and into Carrara. I think that it is more critical in C2 that the right options are checked. Off hand I don't remember what the right options are for C2 but if no one else checks in on it, remind me by IM and I'll try to look them up tomight. - TJ

how are you importing to C2? Facet mesh or vertex primitives? vertex primitive, with polymesh per material works best for me. I have some odd ways of exporting from Poser, I tend to 'group' my export by exporting my figures separately from the scene and combine them in Carrara. (keeping my scene as one object, therefore keeping the object list shorter) Making sure NEVER to export the world or floor, of course. Then making sure my options are unchecked for autoposition. (and making sure all my meshes are scaled up 2100 percent, as poser meshes are too small) never had a memory error, even with big scenes and even when I was on a P3 with 256 ram. (my computer is better now, of course)

btw - I never use Grouper, except to combine textures in one directory. g My method is Poser to Carrara directly. I make sure all my objects are the right scale after I've imported, by changing the scaling in the properties tray for the objects. I get confused by the long lists of materials that Grouper generates with a large scene with a lot of different materials needing different maps/separate grouping, so I just don't bother with it anymore. Carrara doesn't look for the right path anyway for textures Bikermouse, so doubt that's the problem. I've run into badly modeled meshes causing problems in Carrara though. Its probably something like that.

First, thanks for the replies. Much appreciated. I did some more playing and tried the one by one import. I think I've located the object causing the problem, although I don't know why it was. That, combined with the number of figures, was probably the problem. g my problem is that I want too many figures in the scene. To anser some of the questions above, I'm importing them as vertex, a polygon per mesh. THat seems to be the only way I can really get the shaders to be right. Grouper is an excellent help for that. As well as grouping all the textures together. ANd I make sure that the Poser textures are saved externally. These files are big enough without all that. I'll keep playing with it. I really want to use Carrera's rendering tools with some of my Poser figures. Thanks again!

I also want to use the new render functions...even over Bryce, which I'm used to. But this was the oddness I had....exported figure and clothing from poser with world unchecked, "use all groups" and "include figure names" checked, and, I think, "weld" checked. That's the interesting one. In Carrara I chose "polymesh per material." What I got was one object for the figure, another for each shoe, etc. Bad news for the mapping? No...when I checked the figure's shader Carrara had created a layers shader for me, with an entry for each material. So now I have single object which is easy to select and move and view in the heircharchy. But all the material regions are there to be played with in the shader, too. Best of both worlds, I think. I double checked in the vertex modeller and confirmed...selecting by name would pick up skin, nails, teeth, etc as unique groups of vertices. BTW, the manual claims you can do a "save as" then make sure the maps are saved externally. I'm still reading up on "reference shader" to figure out how to make all of the materials using a single texture map to point to a single referenced map. Did I help, or merely obfusticate?

I do it basically the same, nomuse. there is a bug when you have too many objects in a list (which can happen when you use Grouper for breaking into materials, instead of importing the obj to Carrara directly) I only export from Poser with the default options checked. some meshes are buggy - Ive run into this with some Poser props and figures, where they had overlapping materials (dacort eyes for example - I now use only eye props for his figures), this will split the object apart in some really awful ways in Carrara.

OK, but if you don't use Grouper, aren't you going to get an object for each material? In Victoria 3's case, that'd be one for SkinTorso, one for SkinArm, one for SkinForearm, etc. Wouldn't that take up more memory? I guess I could try and see, but it's so slow...

No, JetM; that's the point. When you select both "weld" and "seperate group per material" you get a single object for your Millenium Figure. It has, however, seperate mapping regions for each material; "skinbody, skinhead, inmouth," etc. Much easier than Bryce, where you do indeed get three hundred meshes with names like "Figure:1_lHand_0_3" and of course the lovely "MeshObject_367" As far as memory...you haven't added any vertices. There might be an issue with picture textures, tho, unless you are careful to point everything at a single Reference Texture.

exactly nomuse. I don't get a zillion objects in Carrara. I do it in stages though... I really have to do a tutorial on this I think. Grouper is a great app, but other than its texture grouping tool (which is a godsend timesaver! but not necessary for importing to Carrara) I have no need for it at all. I'll post a screenshot of the settings here in a sec.

Ok, here's the pic for the settings in Carrara. now, the deal in Poser is that you can group it yourself in order to get it easier to move around in Carrara. This means exporting a few OBJ's. You don't HAVE to do this... but I recommend exporting your Poser scenes separately from your Poser figures. Basically I break it down to the scene as one obj, the figures each as their own obj, then the hair as its own obj, separate from the figure. The reason I export the HAIR as a separate obj - this is so I can turn off the shadows on the hair. Why on earth do I turn off shadows on hair? Quite simple. I use soft shadows on my lights, and the hair can cast some really REALLY UGLY shadows due to the transparency not being factored in. So I export hair separate. some other tips. Use the eyebrows gone morphs on figures that have them, so you don't have to go in and delete the horrid things in the vertex modeller. Use good eye props. Blackhearted's are really good. (V3 has good eyes, she doesn't need any props... but other Poser figures don't have the nicest eyes... you could even make better eye props in Carrara by following the Litst tutorial if you wanted) Never export the world or the floor from poser. Make sure you turn everything off and only export the items you want grouped together in that obj. Because, you're going to import that obj as one group in Carrara, and Carrara is going to make a layers list shader for you to texture the parts individually. Each material will be its own named polymesh in the Carrara vertex modeller, so you can move around or delete meshes you don't want. Now, putting it all together. After you import, you'll find that Carrara scaled it for you already. Go click on the obj in the object list (menu to the right, and go to the second tab, where you see the transforms. Put it back to 100 percent scale. Yes, its going to be teeeny tiny. Repeat this for all the objs you import. What you'll notice is that all the objs will pop into place just as they were in Poser. Make sure all the obj are ungrouped, by clicking on the original file name and ungrouping them. Then go to the second menu, and click on 'select all primitives' Yup, everything is going to get selected. Group it. Now... go to the object list again and click on your new group, rename it to something more meaningful by clicking on its name in the first tab, then go to the second tab. At the bottom you'll see the scaling. Rescale the group to 2100 percent (or larger) This rescaling will fix the funky transparency bug that occurs because Poser mesh is too small. Hope this gets you on your way. Really, the process only takes a few minutes ... its fast and efficent. If you want, you can open each obj in Grouper and have it gather up your textures... but Mac users can as well gather them up by hand... its just a time saver to do it in Grouper.

Uncheck the world when exporting the parts of the figure you want out of Poser to be grouped as one object, that will make it easier to recheck the parts you need, as it will automatically uncheck everything. and a minor clarification: Poser figures should be exported with default options checked on the last screen before saving the obj... no need for checking anything else. Carrara will handle things from there.

(and... if you're using eyeprops, make sure you don't export the figure's default eyes g but just the props)

DOH! I think I get it. create one polygon per material, but only one object. That thought seems to be seeping into my weary brain. That's beautiful, bijouchat! It's similar to a process that I used to use when I was heavily into Bryce (the exporting as separate OBJs part). Thanks so much!

yup, one polymesh per material... no need for Grouper when you do that. :) Basically Carrara is doing what Grouper does already. And if you see funky black artifacts that occur from mesh intersecting each other, you can go and move it in the Vertex modeller (the second room in Carrara) Just select the offending mesh by clicking for the named polymesh list in the Selection menu. (third menu) I'm glad my description helps... its the quickest way to get my Poser scenes imported to Carrara and rendered right away! also, after you've made Carrara shaders for your Poser figures, remember to save them for reuse by dragging and dropping the shader into the shader list to the left... that's nifty. The Grouper site (Cast Iron Flamingo) has the best shader descriptions for doing hair transparency in Carrara, its worth remembering the Carrara tutorial there for help texturing your model. :))

I know what the problem was now. I was trying to import and OBJ with texture maps out of range or an error in the material library. I discovered this with another pic and opened both OBJs that were causing my .car not to save in UVMapper. Is that a known bug with Carrera? Or am I just seeing a coincidence?

I have no idea... but thanks for letting me know about it. you can report it to eovia, and find out if its known or not.