Poser Tunic Addendum

Poser Tunic: Addendum

3DA#24 How-To by Alex Kiriako
Associate Editor, 3D Artist / Images by the Author

The "Poser Tunic" article on page 28 of 3DA#24 tells about creating clothing for a Poser 1 female figure imported into 3D Studio Max r1 via DXF, info used to create the Contents Page image for this issue. The article did not get into the technicalities of DXF import, which Alex explained for Poser and 3DS DOS on page 9 of the previous issue, 3DA#23. Since we heard from readers who encountered problems with importing Poser DXFs into 3DS Max, Alex has expanded the earlier information here.--B.A.

Poser 1 with 3DS DOS r4

Here's how to get Poser DXF exports into 3D Studio DOS correctly on the first try.

Under the System Options menu, change the Weld Threshold setting from the default of 0.01 to 0.0001. (If you do mostly DXF importing, you may want to set WELD-THRESHOLD permanently to 0.0001 in your 3DS.SET file.)

In the Loading DXF File dialog, use these settings:

Derive object from: Layer
Weld Vertices:      Yes
Unify Normals:      Yes
Auto-smooth:        Yes
Smoothing angle:    180.0

See the 3D Studio Reference Manual (r4) index page I-1 for more references about working with DXF files.

Poser 1 with 3DS Max r1

In 3DS Max, choose File/Import and make sure the settings are as follows.

Derive object from:  Layer
Weld Threshold:      0.0001
Weld Vertices:       Checked
Smoothing angle:     180.0
Auto-smooth:         Checked
Arc Degrees:         Default (i.e., 10 degrees)
Remove Double Faces: Checked
Fill Polylines:      Checked
Unify Normals:       Checked

See the 3D Studio Max User's Guide page 2-26 for more about DXF import.

Other Notes

Individual Poser 1 models come in with fewer than 2,000 vertices, so you may want to sculpt the geometry to add more detail.
There's more about creating clothing in Doug Kelly's "Clothing for Animated Characters" in 3DA#17 page 23. For other articles, see the "Clothing and fabric" topic in the 3D Artist Comprehensive Index.

Revised: 31 Dec 98
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