Importing an OBJ file from Carrara

[DoctorTed]

Has anyone tried bringing into ZB an OBJ file exported from Carrara? To verify my methods I followed the procedure for importing from Poser (see Glen Southern's tutorials on Poser Arcana). I easily imported a 4 MB OBJ file from Poser, but could not import a 1.2 MB text OBJ, nor could I import a much smaller test OBJ made from a Carrara primitive. In each case I get a uninformative error message about an error in importing the OBJ file.

Has anyone else tried this? Are there particular settings for export that are more likely to work?

Thanks

Ted St. John

[Kathy]

I bought carrera back when it was packaged with Poser and Bryce, and I've only opened it once before.
BUT-

I successfully recreated your error here.

My work around was exporting as an obj, importing to Poser, exporting dxf from Poser into ZB.

Crazy and hairy, I know. But it worked. Sometimes, Z hasn't accepted some of my objz from Poser...it's been really hit and miss. I've found that if I turn them into dxf, it fixes the error...

I don't feel this is much of an answer, but it's what I've found in response to the query.

Hope this helps your thought processes..

:D

[DoctorTed]

Thanks, Kathy, I will give that a try. I agree that it does not solve the underlying problem, but it will get my current project down the road.

[DoctorTed]

Here is a follow-up note that may be worth posting.

I took my OBJ into Poser, made it into a prop, and re-exported it in several formats. Interestingly, the OBJ re-made in Poser imported just fine into ZB. This means that whatever the import problem was, it must have origniated in Carrara.

However, I encountered a new (non-import) problem, which I will post as a separate thread.

It just gets curiouser and curiouser.

[Kathy]

There are days one feels like Sherlock Holmes with all these compatibility questions.

I jump between ZBrush, Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Poser, Bryce...it's a new dance to be sure.

Although I have to say I've finally reached a level of knowledge that has kept me in ZBrush alone. A little PSP for sizing though.

:D :)

[Ray Marshall]

i took and obj from ZBrush into C3, tweaked it and tried to take it back but it just blew the polygons all over the place.

[Xevious]

i took and obj from ZBrush into C3, tweaked it and tried to take it back but it just blew the polygons all over the place.
Have you tried importing it into Carrara as a Vertex object (in one group)? Thats what I did and the base mesh looked ok to me.

[Ray Marshall]

This pipeline seems to work well for me:

I'm now using modo102 for all my basic modelling. I import the model into ZBrush as an .obj file for any additional detail and then create a texture map using GUV tiles, then export to Carrara as .obj using the lowest res mesh out of ZBrush using the Texture menu, Export with the Obj, Txr, Qud, Grp buttons selected. Then it's simply a matter of smoothing the mesh in Carrara and hooking up the texture map under Color in a Shader and flipping the texture map vertically to properly align it.

[Ray Marshall]

I forgot to acknowledge the comment that importing as a single mesh into Carrara works the best.