I am working on a (hobbyist) 3d game project which runs on a custom-built, DirectX based engine which loads its models from .X files. I have been using 3ds Max 2009 in conjunction with Panda .X exporter to export my models for use in the game, which has been working fine so far. However, having reached the point where I needed to make organic models, I recently started using Poser 7 with PoserFusion as a 3ds max plugin. However, 3ds max is unable to export an animated Poser 7 character imported via PoserFusion as a .X file. The result is garbage which cannot even be read by Microsoft's official .X viewer utility. It generally seems to me that this is not the result of one single programming error in one of the tools, but that these programs simply do not work well together (Poser creates complex characters using dozens of bones, while .X seems to be made for fast loading of simple files). I now kindly ask for your suggestions - what part of my modeling pipeline should I change to get usable results? What is the "professional" way to get Poser models into a game (is there even a professional way or do the pros rely on manually creating and rigging each character in Max?) Thanks in advance Alexander

Poser models in general are still too high poly to be used in a game, some of their licenses may even have restrictions on using the mesh for other than 2D rendering.

That said, what you could do is somehow (don't ask me how though) create a lower polygon mesh out of the high poly mesh and use the high poly mesh to create normal maps for the lower poly mesh, direct Poser->Game Format, even if possible would still be too taxing for a game.

Hey Kwizatz, thank you for your reponse!

Poser licensing does not pose (no pun intended ^^) any issues here, I discussed that question with customer support. The following is a quote from an email from a customer service rep:

"Poser Pro License includes two figures that the mesh or derivatives of the mesh can be redistributed in Games or other products, provided these products are not in violation of the EULA."


The problem with the Poser meshes does not seem to be the resolution, I was able to reduce their poly count to under 10000 using 3ds Max's MultiRes modifier without degrading their quality too far. I think, however, that the problem might be caused by the complex bone structure which cannot be simplified by Max as easily. For example, Poser creates a single bone for each finger - that makes sense for pre-rendered animation, but is simply too much for real-time 3d.

Quote: Original post by AlexKappner
Hey Kwizatz, thank you for your reponse!

Poser licensing does not pose (no pun intended ^^) any issues here, I discussed that question with customer support. The following is a quote from an email from a customer service rep:

"Poser Pro License includes two figures that the mesh or derivatives of the mesh can be redistributed in Games or other products, provided these products are not in violation of the EULA."


The problem with the Poser meshes does not seem to be the resolution, I was able to reduce their poly count to under 10000 using 3ds Max's MultiRes modifier without degrading their quality too far. I think, however, that the problem might be caused by the complex bone structure which cannot be simplified by Max as easily. For example, Poser creates a single bone for each finger - that makes sense for pre-rendered animation, but is simply too much for real-time 3d.

Just be clear that extra (the ones you buy separately) and third party figures, like DAZ3D Victoria and such may have different licensing, so, make sure you're not breaking it, its all I am saying, some may even be more permissive.

Well, I really don't know about the X format, much less about the exporter you're using, but I don't think bone count shouldn't be a problem unless you're doing shader assisted animation (I understand 64 or so bones is the max you can pack into a shader).

Not only each finger gets a bone, each phalanx does, which should be fine, of course you can delete the toe bones since you rarely want to animate each toe.

Now, maybe your exporter doesn't support bones and expects a biped, or the other way, doesn't support bipeds but supports bones, also in 3dsmax there is more than one way to skin a cat [lol](skin modifier, physique...), perhaps the one being used by the poser exported is not supported by the X exporter, etc, Maybe you need to collapse the modifier stack before exporting and so on.

[Edited by - Kwizatz on February 2, 2010 2:49:07 PM]

I have sucessfully ported Victoria 4 based models and associated clothing to the game Oblivion. These models work perfectly, with no change to original mesh resolutions, unless such excede 64k (a limitiation of one of the Oblivion support tools known as NIFScope. This is basically the procedure I used...

Take an existing character into MAX using the NIF import plugin (MAX9 or earlier).
Save this as a max file as for use for wheghting the new Poser character.
Export from Max into OBJ format.
Load Victoria 4 into poser and apply any morphs you desire.
Import the OBJ character into poser, will then be a prop assigned to the victoria figure.
I usually set the imported figure to be translucent (50 %) transparent.
move the prop into a position that is symetrically centered to V4 character.
Now pose the v4 Character to match the imported game character. Take your time, expecially on hands and fingers.
Once happy that new figure posed matches the game character pose, you can save the new character for future tweaking if needed.
Now delete the prop, an export the new v4 character to OBJ format.
In Max, open the original character, then import the V4 OBJ using Multiple as the only import option. you may have to play with the vertex scale. I found 170 best for Oblivion game character.
You then rotate the v4 character 180 degress and position position it symetrically centered to the game model.
At this point, select the complete v4 model and collapse it to a single mesh.
Now you addthe same bi-ped bones that the game character has to the V4 model (using the ...animation...skin...menu option) note. turn on ignore bone scale option
Save this file and test that the bones have taken by selecting a bone and moving it, your model should move with it but will be rough at this point.
Now unhide the game model.
Select a section of the game model, ie in Oblivion there is head, foot, hand, upperbody, lowerbody.
Use the skin utilities tool to extract skin data to meshthen select the gamecharacter, and the extracted skindatamodel and use the skin utilities to import the skind data
For import options, I use by vertex, and automatically match all bones.
Once done, delete the skinddatamodel and repeat for each ather section of the game character.
On completion, you will have a fully skinned and game animation freindly model.
You may have too tweak the wheighting. I do this byu importing some of the game animations and adjusting the wheights at different parts of the animation.


This is a very simplified explanation, but does show all the steps to make the character game ready, other than re-sectioning the character to the specific game sections once you are
happy with the model and how it reacts to the animations you imported.

GL