Need some advice...

[Pendraia]

Okay...went and had a shower which cleared my early morning fuzzies and with your last post everything is now much clearer. I had it in my head that you were saying something different but I totally agree with what you said in your last post.

However I do agree with Kobalt that most people would expect to get separate mats. People often apply shaders these days and would need a way to quickly reapply the original materials if they change their minds. I know that Hivewire would expect to see stuff like that from when I did Diva and some of the things that Alisa mentioned.

 

[seachnasaigh]

I too, think that supplying alternative MATs for individual pieces or material zones is good. For something big and complex, I would supply a "preload" (pre-assembled conglomeration of all of the parts), and add some MT5/MC6 files to enable customizable specific changes (e.g., daylight skydome, night skydome, mesh lights ON, mesh lights OFF, still render texture, animated texture).

But again, if the model consists of dozens of props, then a preload assembled and textured model is my preferred starting point (with the MT5/MC6 available for changes). You can change individual materials on Atlantis, but you don't need to in order to use it. You can move/hide/delete/replace pieces of furniture, etc, but you you don't have to assemble it all yourself.

 

[eclark1894]

Okay, found the utility that strips props of their geometry. I's called Geometry Stripper and it's by JHoagland from Vanishing Point. I already had it in my download files.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Earl, there may be instructions with Geometry Stripper, but if not, here's how-to:

After importing your OBJ into Poser and texturing it, save it as a prop - but understand that this will be the name of the extracted OBJ, so, no spaces or odd characters; underscore and dash are OK. If the surfboards use the same mesh, only save one.

Create a dummy runtime folder with a runtime\geometries\eclark1894\projectname folder. Cut your new prop out of your real runtime and paste it into the dummy projectname folder within geometries. This is because when the geometry is stripped, the prop file will be re-written to look for the OBJ in that location where you placed it.

Cut your dummy runtime folder from your project folder, and paste it to the C: drive (not within any folder). This ensures that the paths will be relative only to the runtime folder.

Run Geometry Stripper; browse for the new prop, and process it. You'll then have an extracted OBJ and a new meshless PP2 which references the OBJ.

Cut the dummy runtime from C: and paste it back into your work folder. Now you can copy the OBJ (or use your original OBJ) to your real runtime's geometry\eclark1894\projectname folder. Copy your stripped PP2 to runtime\libraries\props\eclark1894\projectname. You can feel free to rename the prop and use spaces/characters in the name.

If you have multiple textures for the surfboard, load your stripped PP2, re-texture it, and save it with another name. It will save as a stripped prop, referencing the same OBJ as the first.