On a project I'm working on with V2, I will end up with several group names all pointing to the same material. Is is possible for me to join all those groups into one single group and delete the groups out of the file so that when applying the material I wouldn't have to choose each body part? I hope my explanation of the situation makes sense. Seems I read something about deleting groups, like the extra Vicky eyebrow areas. Thanks!

I don't know how to answer the question... but I'm not sure if you mean groups or materials... they're different. If you mean you want to delete the extra material settings, like the extra eyebrows and eyelashes that Victoria has, I know you can... I think you can just strip them out of the .cr2, though I haven't done it, so I don't know... I don't think that helped did it... :(

Well in the material editing menu, there's a pull down menu with all the parts that you can apply materials to, right? So are those body parts or in essence, groups? If it goes like I want it to, and according to the limitations of the grouping tool, I will have to make a separate group on each body part I would like included. If the body parts in the material menu are indeed groups, then how could I join all those extra groups I made into one single group and then remove all instances of the other groups not needed? I know this seems strange but it would have to include portions of certain body parts and not the whole part, otherwise it would be a lot easier. What I'm trying to do is mimic the sub-dividing materials technique but in a different way by using portions of the body parts. If all is successful, it would make a super neat MAT pose file. :) I noticed Anton's product on Daz has the hosiery from the waist down, so he must have included whole body parts. I don't know for sure since I don't have that product but it's what the pictures look like to me.

The group tool imbeds geometry in the cr2 file, it is better to use uv mapper. You can create a group in poser, use uv mapper to asign the group to a material. Then when you export from uv mapper you choose to export the materials but not the groups. Discard the original .obj the goup tool was used on and replace it with the uv mapper version. If it's somthing you'll be giving away or a commercial project you can use objaction mover to encode the new .obj file. If it's for personal use you can skip most of that. The group tool uses geometry coordinates to define an area, UV mapper uses uv coordinates. If you try to sell or distribute a cr2 with embedded geometry, if it's based on somone else's .obj, it's considered to be infringing on copyright. Also embedded geometry causes bugs in pro pack. Hope that makes sense :).

If you like using the group tool in Poser because you can rotate the model around to make sure you've selected every face correctly. Just import the figure as a prop. Use the grouping tool. Then once you are done. Open the .obj in UVmapper. And select all of those extra groups and combine them into only the groups you really need. It took me a long time to get used to using UVmapper alone for making materials and groups becuse I was used to being able to spin a model around and select the faces I wanted to include in each group/material. Eventually. I got to the point where UVmapper alone was the only thing I needed. ScottA

Ok - this is for V2, BTW. Last evening I did some archive searching and found some information but it didn't seem clear to me for some reason. UV Mapper does sound like the way to go, but Daz has both a head map and a body map. I still don't see how it works that way, to have it all overlapping on the same map. I figured out how to select parts and hide them from the screen. Now, after that's done I can select the areas I want mapped. Well, what happens after that? I want V2 to remain the same with the exception of the little material area I'm going to add. So do I make a copy of the V2 *.obj or do I just need to save the new UV coordinates and use the Objaction Mover? Sorry for so many questions, but the beginning of the process has been explained more fully than the middle and end. I'm one of those people that need actual steps (kinda like a recipe) on how to do something rather than just an overview.

Materials are stored in the figure's .obj file. Poser will read the .obj file and copy all of them into the figure's cr2 file. That way you can edit them in Poser's material editor later. If you want the rest of the texture to apply to her normally. Don't move anything around or rescale it after you select it. Just select an area. And assign a material to it. Then save the model (.obj file)using the same name as the one you opened in UVmapper. This will overwrite your model with the updated UVmapping and/or materials and grouping changes you made. Then delete the .rsr in the geometries folder for her so your changes get updated in Poser. Open Poser->Load the figure from the library->Open the materials editor. And you should now see your new material there, and you can assign any color/texture you want to that area. ScottA

Thanks for your help, Scott, but what about distribution? If I save the model, it will suit my purposes just fine but I'm not sure how to make it sendable file.

Oh...In that case. Do everything like my previous post. Then...when you are all done. Load the .obj file in UVmapper and Export the UVcoordinates from UVmapper. Send those coordinates to other people along with any other textures you added to the figure. That way anyone can update their own .obj file. And apply your new textures. ScottA

Ok here we go again. LOL I've isolated the areas I wanted in UV Mapper and assigned it to the new material. I saved the model under a new name so I wouldn't mess up the original. I told UV Mapper to save the texture map after I had told UV Mapper to not show all the other parts I didn't want. Then I opened the new map in PSP and it's showing every single part and not the parts I wanted. grrrrrrrrrrrrr.... How can I texure that material when I can't see it in the map? Can I cheat and make a screenshot of it instead? lol I'm lost again.

From UV Mapper, the pop up menu on Exporting UVs shows a lot of choices. Do I check the last three? Group Names Material Names UV Mapping Region

Yes. Check those options. Those will be needed when someone else imports your UVcoordinates. When you hide some of the parts. You'll need to check the option that says "exclude hidden facets" when you save your texture. But if you do this. You will need more than one texture map to be assigned to the figure. This is how they made those figures use multiple textures. And I thought you wanted to get rid of that? ScottA

velvet, i think i got lost so let me try and explain what i THINK i understand... you want it so the vicki materials pulldown in poser contains a (for example) "velvet spot" plus all the rest that you left alone. "velvet spot" is made up of skin areas you took out of the original vicki skin areas. you want the parts of the original vicki skin that you don't want in "velvet spot" to still work the way they used to. eg if you wanted "velvet spot" to apply to half her head and half her neck and half her chest, but the other halves of these bits still work with the regular vicki skin. does that sound right?!? if so, in uvmapper, you just select the spots you want for "velvet spot" and then assign to material "velvet spot" not so easy as you know because vicki has the head parts overlaying the body parts. what you do is select by material (say SkinHead) then hit the backslash - that material gets hidden. then you deselect by clicking anywhere on the window, then hit backslash again. now you've hidden all the other bits and the SkinHead reappears. and now you can work on SkinHead alone. select the bits you want, then assign to your new material "velvet spot". then move on the the next vicki material you want to work on, in the same manner, and assign to the same material "velvet spot". case and spacing counts. when done, save the model, then reload the model in uvmapper and it will have got rid of any material names you might have over-ridden altogether. (say you covered the whole SkinHead with "velvet spot" - SkinHead will no longer appear.) after all that is done, save, load in poser using a copy of a vicki cr2 but delete the materials section towards the bottom of the file - poser will recreate that upon loading your object. now you have in the dropdown, velvet spot! and none of the materials you over-rode, if any. back in uvmapper, you want a texture map of just velvet spot... again select by material "velvet spot", hit backslash, deselect, hit backslash again, now only velvet spot appears... save texture map. if this is how you want it, don't mess with the groups in uvmapper because any you rename or reassign won't show in poser without editing the cr2 to add your new group actors... and cr2 editing just gets messy. i HOPE that helps...

as for the uvmapper tickboxes when saving stuff, i just leave the default and they seem to work for me... UP UNTIL you are saving the uvs for redistribution, in which case you do say to save group names and material names in uvmapper version 0.25e - otherwise others won't see velvet spot :)

Actually, with Scott's help, I was able to get it to work! I still have some testing to do. I will post my results when I get everything ready. I will do one for P4 as well. Yes I'm using the UV Mapper version 0.25e. I can't wait to see what the Pro version will do!

If you do a lot of hiding in UVmapper. I would suggest you get into the habit of assigning things to there own regions. It's a lot faster to select them later on by selecting parts by region. Ain't UVmapper fun once you learn all of her tricks? ;-) ScottA