Grouper is a utility that read wavefront OBJ file and their matching MTL files. It will examine the textures used and regroup the object so that all parts of the model that use a single texture will be grouped together. This is very handy when sending a model from
Poser to
bryce, because for example, in
bryce you will now have only a single group that contains all the parts of the model that use a skin texture rather than having to deal with hip, abdomen, chest, right shoulder, etc. rather. Grouper will also rewite the mtl so that references to a BUm file will be replace with a reference to a BMP or JPG file. The latter versions can also fix some problems in an OBJ file and it can also gather the texture maps that a model uses together from where
Poser or other software has them into a single directory; that way if you place the new obj and mtl files into the same directory, Byrce will be able to find the texture maps without you having to manually locate each of them for
bryce. Alse the names that groups used for material groups are nicer to work with than how
Poser exports them.
My pet peeve with
Poser exports that grouper can not fix, is that
Poser will not export tranmap details into the MTL file. But thanks to the work grouper has already done, it is much more easy to fix within
bryce than if grouper had not been used.
It is available as freeware and you can download a copy from its tutorial page on its home website, "Cast Iron Flamingo":
http://www.castironflamingo.com/tutorial/grouper/index.html This page is a tutorial but is mostly an explaination of the benefits of the program, the page also has the download links for both versions 1.3 and 1.4r1.
Pangor