Any way to convert Poser .mt5 and .cbr files? (More Stupid Questions)

scotchfairy

Downloading free content off the net has been useful in teaching me where files are supposed to go, but without a real manual to refer to, I'm still a little confused as to which Poser files DS can actually read, and which are included by way of the DSON-converter for compatibility with Poser.

I know that DS can read the older .pz2 Mat Pose files, but am I correct that it can't read the newer .mc6? And can DS read .pz3 scene files, or are they a waste of space?

At least the material (mt5) files are usually zipped with jpg texture files, which makes the bundles not-totally-useless. The Poser material files (mt5) if I understand correctly, are node-based materials and can't be used by DS. At least not directly. Is there a way to crack the files open and turn them into obj? I know that's been done for a few Bryce materials, but I don't know the procedure.

Similarly, with Poser shaders, is there any way to open the file and at least produce image files that I can throw into Photoshop to start over again from scratch? One of the Poser folks online did some really lovely cross-woven thai silk and watered silk shaders, and I'd like to try and reproduce the effect.

(I remember seeing the instruction to "uncompress" a duf file to manually fix a problem, but I may be confused about that. At least here on a Mac, that appears to be non-trivial, as the archive expanders are all st00pid and freak out if a file doesn't have the right file ending. If someone can explain that too, I'd be much happier messing with all these files).

Oh, one more while I'm at it: while making texture files, how are the blue-screened "normals" made? Some programs like the ivy generator want them, even if DS doesn't handle them. I understand what the bump and transparency mask files do (and I'm sure if I dig around enough, I'll even find a Photoshop droplet that will produce the files for me automatically).

fixmypcmike

DS4 reads .mc6 files, but like .pz2 material poses it ignores the shader tree.
It reads .pz3 files, unless they contain dynamic clothing or hair. The Poser lights are of limited use.
If your decompression program balks at unknown file extensions, just make a copy and change the extension to .zip.

scotchfairy

The Poser lights are mostly of no use because they're Python-based scripts?
(I'm still wishing we could do realtime light switches, neon lights, signs, and self-lighting props the way the Python-based lighting allows)

fixmypcmike

Conventional Poser lights tend to be too bright in DS with shadows turned off.

DS can turn surfaces into lights using UberAreaLight, which is built in.