Hi,
is there any chance to import the Poser files (*.cr2) in blender? I found some tips to export them in Poser into an blender readable format, but I haven’t Poser.
rc2 is a plain text format and Poser itself very popular. So are there any effords to write a import script for poser? Did someone start to do it?
regards
Andreas
Hm, I’m not sure. There’s also an Poser file format with .pz2 ending. Perhaps there’s more that one file version…
Andreas
I don’t think so. Poser is not incredibly popular amongst Blender users and since it can export to formats that Blender can import there really seems to be no point in doing all that work.
Hm, but Poser isn’t available for linux. This is enough reason for me to think about it.
I’ve not much experience with python. In C++ this would be much easier for me. But I’ll try it. The poser format seems to be only an extension of the Wavefront obj format. But before I start two questions:
Is it possible to use some python modules like listed here?
http://www.nedbatchelder.com/text/python-parsers.html
Or do you recommend only to use the modules which are in python itself?
Are there docs for Blender import/export scripts? I searched in the Blender Python API, but found nothing.
regards
Andreas
I think the cr2 files don’t contain the object geometry by themselves, but morph targets and such, I am not sure, I totally forgot.
I assume you are aware of the file importer scripts that already come with Blender? The Wavefront importer loads the Poser files, although not always very well.
But Really, poser geometries are not Blender friendly, I tried to use some of the freely availiable poser clothing from renderositiy.com at least as a starting point for clothes for my own all-Blender characters, since somebody wrote some script which I supposed would save me a lot of work. But those files are massive in vertex count, sometimes all made out of small triangles. Modifying those files seems as much work as starting from some basic garments I already have modeled with Blender.
I’m also not very experienced with Poser files. But as I currently think there are a lot of different files for different Poser versions and so it’s a little complex.
The pz3 is one version (here: Poser 4.01) seems to contain clothes and materials. Textures are provided as external images. The pz3 has an embeded obj format, but the obj importer couldn’t read it, because there’s much stuff around it.
I searched around for the body object. It seems not to be in all pz3 files. I think most Poser files that are in the web are only “themes” for some body objects. There’s always a Readme file that says: “Use this poses for model xyz…”
This is the best ressource I found for the Poser format. But not all versions are listed here:
http://aarrgghh.com/poser/home.htm
I asked this also on blender.org developers forum, because I need some python help to do it. I thought about to create an external converter for obj/Poser C+, because I’ve more experience with C++. But python would be better to integrate in Blender.
regards
Andreas
The Poser 3 format is what is most used since it is both forward and backward compatible, most tools haven’t cared to support the other formats.
I have collected a few resources on the format that you might find of use
Ogre3d
http://www.ogre3d.org/
has an importer for poser format, also here is information on the format that you might find useful
http://blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=4635
LetterRip
I am currently looking into it. But I am new to both Python and Blender, so don’t expect miracles… 
The most comprehensive and clearly presented documentation of the Poser file format(s) I have found up to now is the " Unofficial CR2 File Specification" at http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/poser/poserfilespec/ucr2filespec.html
It shows that these files sometimes contain 3d information, but this is mostly put in separate .obj files, but also contains material information (there are files that contain ONLY material information), Armature information, geometric deformer information (in Blender: Vertex Keys), and animation keys (tthere are some files that only contain these)
I have already stumbled over one problem: When importing a complete Poser figure (.obj file), every group (Poser body part) will be its own mesh. This is all well, until I try to pose and animate the figure, but with separate meshes mesh deformation by the Armature does not happen. On the other hand, if I join all these meshes into one, the combined mesh always uses more than 16 materials. And again, I lose.
For the time being, I use a modified Blender binary where the Materials per Mesh limit has been bumped up to 32 (does not work perfectly, as the bitmap saying whether to use the object’s or the mesh’s material table uses only 16 bit, but works)
Is there anybody out there who can tell me another way to overcome this issue (i.e. either deform multiple meshes, or tell Blender to use more materials, or something else that hasn’t occurred to me yet)?
Another problem with Poser is that they don’t really want you to export the stuff you create there. All their export functions produce poor quality. They used to have a good 3d Studio Max importer, that looked just as good as if the models where in Poser, but then dropped support for it.
What you should be looking for is a better program to replace Poser.