Look at Body Studio.  Reiss is the maker.  I use the Maya version - it works very well.  Good Luck.

I've been trying to use Poser, 3ds max and Virtools to leverage the massive art community of poser in a game environment.  No luck yet.  Poser characters are 150,000 verts and game engines handle 150,000 verts total.  So I used the multires modifier in 3ds max to knock down the vert count and used kaldera to mimic the high geometry with normalized bump maps.  Then I export it to Virtools which crashes and makes me go in to the closet and sob. 

 

I have tried it all over the past 2 years.  I have bought body studio 2.6 from Reiss, Gesturemax, pcharacter import and the Daz3d fbx plugin.  I'm using 3ds max 8.0 2nd release with the latest updates and nothing works.  Unlike other vague posts that I read I will be very specific in why each of these don't work. 

 

bodystudio 2.6 - it only imports the mesh... you get no bones... no rig but imports textures and the pose pretty well.  It was like pulling teeth to get their tech suppor to tell you anything about what their plugin was actually used for.  I just bouhgt it and gambled and lost.  When you ask them if they are working on a way add rig funcionality they say they really can't talk about it right now.  So as of right now you loose all morph dials and even if you try to add an edit mesh over the top of the poser figure and try to add a biped and rig/weight the verts yourself it crashes a lot not to metion you are actually trying to rig 143,444 verts unlike game characters which are 1200 verts.  You get so much vert crashing in the joints it's rediculous and I even bought the advanced rigging dvd from 3ds max which added stretchy bones to the hips to lif the skin out of the way when you bend the leg and it still looked like crap... meaning it was no where near as smooth as das studio or poser mesh deformations.  I even tried to create a morpher modifier for the mesh and imported multiple meshes for stages of an animation to morph between but you loose control of the rig when you do this which is the whole point of tryiny to get these poser figures in to 3ds max... more control... not less.

 

Gesturemax - more of the same joint crashing problem no matter if I do a physique biped or a bone skin modifier or a biped skin mod combo.  Gesture max claims to create a rig and skin it for you automatically but the end result doesn't look as good as poser and daz studio and is impossible to correct... I've spent weeks and had no luck on a single joint.

 

pcharacter import - it imports cr2 files and comes with included weights for the bones it creates in 3ds max but in no way even closely mimics what you are used to in poser and daz studio mesh deformation... which isn't saying much... meaning when you move the leg up to the chest the butt stays the same size and is very unnatural... for example.

 

Daz 3d fbx plugin for 3ds max.  I love it when you forward a picture of a character not deforming correctly to the tech support staff and they write back telling you that the problem has been solved and the ticket is closed.  This is what they told me to do to correct the problem with the vert crashing in the hips... "In 3dStudioMax, when you first load the FBX file, it will have corrupt displacement of the joints like that.  However, it is fixed simply by selecting the whole mesh, click on â??Edit Envelopesâ?? in the skin modifier and the joints look and work great after that"

 

lmfao

 

They might as well have told me to attach a jet pack to an elephant, click the fly button and everything will work out great for your Ph.D. defense on Cantonese Cooking. 

 

 

 

So If anyone has had any success with any of these plugins please let me know.  A friend just told me to get 3DGS lightwave and greenbriar and all my troubles will go away.  So rather than killing myself for wasting two years of my frickin life on max I will try it.  I'll probably be back in 2 years to complain about these apps but by then we'll all have holodecks so it won't matter.

 

Another option is to just jack poser and daz3d characters buy rebuilding them yourself in 3ds max.  I know this sounds like an insane unproductive waste of time but I was able to box model Victoria 3 myself, skin her, rig her and map a 1300 vert meshsmooth faxsimile of her her in 2 days... compared to 2 years trying to get all these apps to work together.  I deduced a trick from the Hexagon video on the eovia site.  You can actually box model with a meshsmooth modifier on the stack.  You just turn on the end effect button and keep moving verts and subdividing surfaces until the mesh looks like the obj file underneath it.  If you feel like you are spinning your wheels learning complex apps and hoping they will work for you I recommend doing this just for cathartic purposes. 

 

If Autodesk is busy buying up comapnies why don't they buy a cheesy game engine so you don't have to import export anything?  Why don't they shake hands and get along with the poser daz3d renderosity community so we can all work together as a community of developers rather than everybody wasting their lives reinventing the wheel trying to figure out how to import export?

Poser to Virtools

By Rickv3

1) Save character as PZ3 with all the joints zeroed

2)Open Carrara 5 pro and import the character using the transposer plugin

3)Export as OBJ

4) Open the PZ3 once again in Carrara this time with native importer

5) Export as FBX

6)Import FBX file into Maya 8 or whatever version you have...you could use the FBX version straight off the bat, because all the weights work well, but I get annoyed with all the seams in the mesh so this is my workaround. 

7)Import the OBJ and allign it with the FBX version of the model

8)Smooth bind the obj with the bones joints from the FBX version.  hint:  the finger tips and toes on the OBJ do not always get included, so scale the 3rd joints on the these extremedies to compensate.

9)copy skin weights from FBX to the OBJ...Takes me about 10 min to calculate, maya 8, pentium core duo 1.8 ghz, 2 GB ram... time for you may differ

10) delete the FBX mesh

11)export to Virtools

12) create textures

13) apply textuure to mesh material

hope this helps

 

   Has anyone figured out. how to export and properly map a Poser model in Max 8

Even though I am replying to a somewhat old post, I feel the need to address the response made by Neiklot96 (any relation to Nekron99?), which in my mind is one of the best written critiques of this battery of software that I have yet read, being both insightful and thorough where (and I concur about the 'pulling teeth' syndrome when trying to get answers from the official sources sometimes) no one else seems to dare tread. I have also spent countless hours, or quite possibly several years trying to streamline the cross translation between Poser 4, 5, 6 and 7 and 3dSmax (I use max 8.0.3) specifically for the human forms but have run across mostly hassle. I had actually been considering for some time now on whether to purchase the Bodystudio plugin, and thankfully it is so expensive or it seems I would have already purchased it and been resentful for the waste of money. Neiklot's post answered all of the questions that I had about Bodystudio except for the one: "What is it for, then?", because there is really no problem in moving perfect .OBJ files back and forth all day, nor with mapping (I use Unwrap3D which is by far the superior choice in bridges between any number of applications for the purpose of refining UV maps and consistent texture placement). I really have no problem in recreating any rig that is necessary for the characters, and admittedly it is kinda fun to work through all the vertex weights, etc... the first few times. I also agree with Biffo1 in that it is really the best effect to simply recreate the entire mesh of a character (using an imported example if you really feel the need to recreate a close likeness of a pre-existing model) and then export it as an .OBJ to Poser to then add a skeleton from one of the stock characters. Why not? as this is how I do conforming clothing anyways...

My real obstacle (or at least the one that I would most like to overcome) is the way that a mesh will only seem to retain its skeleton while actually in the Poser program, and admittedly it is a complete drag to use the somewhat cumbersome rig setup room that comes in Poser. OK. That was an understatement... I really, really dislike the Poser setup room. Especially for dynamic objects with complex meshes but simple skeletons (like a hi-poly poseable rifle with folding stock and bipod). If there were any better way to either export the skeletal rig only from Poser to 3DSmax, or import one that works in Poser then I am all ears...

Nearly forgot to address the original question by MoorDragon:

The way that I have been best able to translate complete characters (including any accessory or hair) into 3DSmax is to first assemble the entire character complete in Poser and then save it as its own .CR2 file. Then, export the entire character as an .OBJ, remembering to keep all of the polygons with their original names &tc. Then I will use a combination of Maz's Objaction Scaler and the Wavefront IMP/EXP plugin by HABWare (the version for Max6 works fine in Max8) to bring it into 3DSmax without corrupting any of the rescaled vertex data. The imported mesh will retain all of its original groups as either distinct elements or sub-objects depending on your preferences, and will place it centered at (0,0,0). It will also translate all of the texture data sufficiently but it is a bit of a trick to get it all to render wisely. Exporting it is simply a matter of reversing the process, although I prefer to export complete models into some other format first, such as .U3D or .FBX so it is better compatible with other programs such as Milkshape3D or Unwrap. As long as all of the joints were zeroed in Poser before exporting the complete mesh, and the same scaling and overall position (as long as the body-part names) were kept intact when re importing into Poser then it will readily accept fresh skeletal data from the same character that was originally exported, which can then be re-saved as a complete character once again. Dunno if this is all old news to you, but I will offer what I know...

  1.Export your model from DAZ studio with the collada exporter.
  2.download the collada importer for Max (dont use the  autodesk .dae one already in max9, it dont work)
  3. import your .dae model into 3dsmax
  4. link the poser exported helper bones to a biped
  5 animate the biped

 I think thats how I was able to do it a while back, and it worked great. I'm about to do it again to start making some models for the unreal3 engine (with reduced resolution of course).

To link anything in max I just select the object I want to link, click the link button and click the object I want to link to.  If there are alot of objects you can either freeze the ones you know you don't want or just hit the h key and select the one you do want from the list.  You can also link using the graph editor... it shows a box for each object in the scene and you can select the link button and connect them... I think it's called the graph editor... it's up there on the top right side of the insane amount of buttons max makes you remember... how bout voice activation.... "computer... link all daz bones to biped and use your best judgement... you know I'm just trying to get daz characters in to a video game like Beyond Virtual."  I found out Beyond Virtual actaully allows you to import fbx files right in to a scene and click play... amazing!!! Now why can't autodesk just make their damn reactor sim environment a game engine?  Or why can't daz3d and poser just start creating low res characters with high res normal maps?  Who the hell wants to render movies and images over just dropping characters that work in to a game engine?  All I really want is to buy game art from renderosity or daz3d and drop it in Beyond Virtual.  "Computer! Make daz3d and poser start to create game art and tell 3d artists on renderosity I will not buy their products unless they are low poly with normal maps and are rigged because I don't want to spend my life weighting verts and I will not buy anything from anyone unless it is an fbx file format that I can simply drop in to the Beyond Virtual game engine.  Computer!  Why have you not done this yet?  I want this done by tomorrow so I can start spending thousands of dollars again to support the 3d graphic art industry.  No I will not spend money to render still images or movies.  That's what humans used to do inthe 20th century.  Now it is the year 2008 and cable and netflix do not do it for me anymore.  I must play interactive video games to get my fix and I will not buy a damn playstation or xbox ever... period... because this is for tools only and because I have a copy of windows ultimate 64bit and an 8800 640 meg graphics card with a dual core cpu and directx 10 and 4 gig of frickin ram that have all been waiting for a year to be used and taken advantage of.  If you support playstation and xbox than you are telling the industry that you do not mind if they stop making video games for pc... christ... I'm still playing Oblivion. 

Update to Poser 7 and use COLLADA.

I had trouble with the poser 7 collada export but I was able to get the daz studio collada export to not only import in to 3dsmax but ultimately in to the Beyond Virtual game engine without reducing the resolution of the character.

I have successfully loaded several renderosity and daz3d products in to Beyond Virtual. Althought the engine takes about a minute to load after i click run, once it starts the frame rate seems to fine. I loaded Mog Ruith... a 500,000 polygon house and I loaded a 300,000 polygon v4 daz3d character with clothes, hair and 600 frames of animation... amazing. Although these polygon counts are far from ideal in a game engine, it is amazing that they work. I have never been able to do this with any other game engine I have tried in 4 years including virtools, darksdk, fps shooter, directx or 3dimpact.

Daz provides the collada file format export plugin. All I did was load objects in daz3d and exported a collada file. I opened the file in 3ds max and exported it as an fbx file. I added the fbx file to my beyond virtual sceen and ran the game.

To get a characters out of daz and into beyond virtual, as far as I know, requires you to create a biped in 3dsmax, use the same number of bones used in daz, align the rotation axis of the biped to match the imported bones, save the collada character weighted verts to a file, convert the collada character mesh to a mesh, create a skin modifier for the mesh, rename the biped boned to match the names of imported bones, load the vert weight file on to the new skin modifier, match the old bones in the list to the new bones, add a bip file to the new bones and export the character as an fbx file. The fbx export creates a warning that I answer no to and then I can successfully open the fbx file in beyond virtual. You need to create skin modifiers for the clothes in the same way. I would be happy to share the vert weight files and biped files I've created if anyone wants them.

I know this all seems rediculously hard but the fact that the collada export now allows me to use the imported painted verts from daz instead of just importing a mesh and trying to paint those shoulders and hip joints from scratch and the fact that these huge meshes open in beyond virtual has me so excited I can hardly contain myself.

I spent over a month once trying to paint verts for a daz3d rig and couldn't get it to look as good as it looked in poser as you can see above. I used to also use the multires modifier to reduce the mesh size before trying to open it in a real time environment. It seems the world is changing. Wow.

Before when I tried stuff in virtools or fps shooter or directx the game engine crashed. Beyond Virtual does not crash even with huge daz meshes. I think this is partly due to the fact that I have a dual core and an 8800 nvdia graphics accelerator with 640 meg of ram and 4 gig of memory on the board but hey... it works. I know it is ineffiecient but think of what this means to the online 3d community... daz3d and renderosity have huge art communities... 100s of thousands of members... and if they find out Beyond Virtual can provide a real time interactive environment for industry standard high res characters... we are going to have a revolution on our hands and a power shift. Daz characters are free and daz studio is free and tens of thousands of artists know how to customize them and are selling morphs based on them. And not characters but every oject you could ever want to put in your game. I would even like to see a beyond virtual online shopping cart that allows me to walk around a 3d world and select and buy game art from vendors for my games. Think of how much that will revolutionize the 3d gaming world. No longer will I have to go to best buy and get depressed about how many games there are on the shelf that I don't want to buy. No longer will I have to flip through 500 channels of cable to see if anything is on. I'll just open Beyond Virtual with my new Nuance voice activated speech to text microphone and say computer... midevil setting... load the battle I just bought last night off of renderosity... resume.

here's an export - as is, from Daz3D ver 2.0 to Max 9

shoulders seem fine as well- using collada built into Daz3d & Feeling S/W's Max Collada

Honestly- this is as good as I could expect

Patrick

here is another AS IS collada import of the V3 GND2 figure- morphs baked in. color & transmaps intact- bump maps not imported tho.
Also kept getting some kind of memory error- not sure if self induced after I tried fixing the bump mapping.