Introduction
Now that POSER 3 has been made available for free on magazine cover discs,
it's possible to include fully posed people in POVRay.
This tutorial explains one path by which POSER 3 data may be rendered in
POVRay v3.5, or MegaPOV, using only free utilities. POVRay v3.1 is not
really suitable for this, since it doesn't support uv mapping, and
the model would have to be converted to a collection of smooth triangles
instead of the faster mesh2 structure.
Conversion Software
OBJuvPOV
Although written for converting between POSER 4 and MegaPOV, this utility works perfectly well
with POSER 3 and POVRay 3.5.
UVmapper classic
This utility can be used to produce texture maps, and to modify material mapping in OBJ files.
Alternative Software
PoseRay
Converts POSER 3 and POSER 4 files to POVRay 3.5 or MegaPOV 0.7.
PoseRay doesn't just convert the model geometry, but can obtain camera and lighting
information from the PZ3 file, and texture information from the MTL (POSER 4) files.
This makes it much easier to reproduce in POVRay exactly what you see on the POSER screen.
Most of the points raised in the following tutorial apply equally well to PoseRay.
Crossroads
Converts between several 3D formats.
The POV output is in mesh1 format only, so uvmapping is not supported.
The model is grouped by "group" rather than by "material", which means that you end up
having to apply a texture to the whole head, rather than separate textures to the skin, lips,
eyebrow, teeth, etc.
The techniques described in this tutorial are not applicable to Crossroads.
Tutorial
The tutorial is split into the following sections:
- Simple Conversion
- Fixing materials
- UV Mapping
- Poser 4 and transparency maps
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