Poser, Collada and CS4 not working...

Question

I upgraded to CS4 for one reason only. The ability to paint directly on figures. So far I can't get my figure to open in Photoshop after having used the Collada exporter in Poser. Error message is, "The Photoshop 3D file format cannot Parse this file.
I can open .obj files exported from Poser but I need the Collada exporter for resizing the tiny Poser figures. This works in CS3, what's wrong with CS4?
Mimi

Answer 1

I'm sorry to be so long in getting back to you. I understand what your issues are, and I have had lots of problems moving 3D models from one program to another myself. Do you have any 3D program other than Poser? I'm actually not using Photoshop myself for what you are trying to do. I have used Cinema 4D in the past, and that allows one to pull in Poser models directly and one can use the included BodyPaint to paint in 3D with layers. It is better than Photoshop for that, but leaves something to be desired if you want to paint a displacement map (where you need to use zbrush or mudbox). I've used Maya, and its painting part is worse than Photoshop. Recently, I've used Autodesk's Softimage and imported the collada models. They require a considerable amount of reweighting to work, but Softimage is a great program for modeling and animating (probably the best). In Softimage, I use the BodyPaint plugin to do what you are wanting to do. It works, and Photoshop is not quite ready for prime time for 3D painting, in my opinion. The Poser collada export is problematic in most programs. I could never get textures to import into Houdini correctly. The collada export works best with Softimage, but one still needs to fix transparency and bump issues. My experience with older versions of DAZ studio were that they were very buggy and not to be recommended.
I wish I could give you better advice. The rescaling issue is difficult to fix without a real 3D program. I can rescale models easily in most programs (Maya, Softimage, Houdini, Cinema 4D, etc.) but not in Poser. I export collada with 1000% scaling for Softimage, and as you say, you can't do that with obj models. (you can scale obj models in most 3D programs and then export them to Photoshop, Zbrush, Mudbox, etc., but you need a "real" 3D program. Poser was made for people who like to pose human models, but it is very weak in rendering, creating models, simplifying complex polygons, simulations, and about every standard thing one does in a real program.
I haven't used blender, but it is a free 3D program and pretty powerful if you can get around its archaic interface. You might try exporting an obj file from poser and rescaling it in blender and then pulling it up in Photoshop. It is worth a shot.
All the best,
Philo