PClub INJection Pose Builder seems like something cool for building characters with V3. I've read the Faq n the info. I'm still kinda lost. Is this app basically a dial spinner pose file saver appy thingy? "Damnit Jim I'm an artist not a programmer!"

And only a $1.99 too (Platinum Club at daz)! Hope we can all figure it out. Sorry I can't help you, but it does look like it could be useful.

From what I can see, it will translate your V3 based cr2s and regular pz2 files into pz2 files (and faces) that contain only the dial settings and the commands to load the necessary morphs (via injection) This could easily knock those vicky 3 character files down considerably in size. Very handy.....now if they would just do the injection for V2 and M2 as well, our disks would all become much lighter:) I would like to see them add some sort of configuration system to allow you to add your own components for it to pick up on, so that you could use it on non-standard characters as well, but I don't think that is likely. eric

And did anyone notice the little teaser blurb hidden in the details?

• Figure
  Currently Compatible with Victoria 3.0 (free update as Michael 3 becomes available)

Yeah well Michael3 has been a tease for months, not much news there really. I'm still wondering if Daz's INJection Pose Builder is basically only good with Daz related morphs. I'm gunna have to get this and play I guess. Anton, come back, post, please! sigh

Straight from the horse's mouth... Victoria 3 introduced a new system whereby you INJect the morphs you want to use, as you want to use them. After INJecting those morphs, you can spin the dials to your heart's content. Problem is, when you save those settings to your library (via pose or face files), only the values for the dials [channels] are recorded (by choosing yes when prompted to include morph information). When you load V3 later and apply the pose you saved, it appears as though nothing happened. Well, in actuality, the values recorded have been applied... but because the morphs are not loaded and the channels are not visible, you don't see the change. Before this utility, you would need to either inject all the morphs (needlessly taxing system resources) or manually create (by hand) all of the readScript references to load all the morphs used to create your 'character'. The other alternative was to save a cr2/pz3, which records much more information than is needed and consumes valuable drive space. Being that Poser doesn't save information for 'BODY' channels in a pose file, and given that the best way to apply Full Body Morphs (which all of Victoria's body morphs are) is from the 'BODY', the cr2/pz3 route offered the least heartache. The problem there, aside from consuming space on your hard drive that is better spent somewhere else, is that when an update is released (be it for adding features or correcting a problem) your saved cr2/pz3 doesn't benefit from the changes. So, enter IPB... IPB automates the tedious grunt work of creating poses that include readScript references, previously done exclusively by hand. It does this, based on the values of the channels it reads in the cr2/pz2/fc2 you feed it. Using the options in the 'Options' dialogs, the user can decide exactly how the file is built and what information it contains. Simply? IPB negates the need to manually track down all the [DAZ created] morphs that went into creating that 'perfect' character for Victoria 3, by doing it for you. And it does it in the best possible way to save your system resources, hard drive space, and create files that are completely legit to give away and/or sell. Granted, I'm sure this sounds a bit biased coming from me... but truth be told, I wouldn't of created it if I didn't see a need for it. And if you care for a bit more, it just so happens that this tool was something I created for our [DAZ's] production department, as an in-house tool to speed up the production pipeline. Seeing the relevance for such a tool, I (with help) convinced the PTB that releasing this particular tool would be good for the overall community. -Rob (the guy who wrote it)

Rob, how does it work? I know this is stupid...but I'm the dummy of the group. I mean, when I open up Poser, what will I see and how would I use it? Does it work in Poser 4 and Poser 5? If we use both Posers, where will we find this program? I'm just about ready to toss Vicky 3 so if this would make her usable, I'd happily spend $1.99 on it. I just don't want something else that just slows my system down even more than it is (and I mean my brain system, not my computer system). Many thanks for any illumination you can give. I know most people here will use this with ease. I just need the dummy's version for the one of us who doesn't understand anything technical (that would be me).

If I understand it right: Part 1 - Poser: Load V3. Inject the morphs you want. Spin the dials to the settings you want. Save the character to the library. Part 2 - INJection Poser Builder: Open up the program and tell it to create the .pz2 file or .fc2 file. Use .pz2 if it's a full body set-up, .fc2 if it's just for V3's facial features. INJection Poser Builder spits out the file wherever you tell it to. Part 3 - Poser Load the V3 base figure. Go to the Pose (or Face) folder where you told INJection Poser Builder to store the file. Double click on the file just like you would any other Pose or Face file, and the morphs are loaded and put to the settings you'd dialed in. (I assume that you have to manually delete the V3 character .cr2 file that you created from the Poser Figure library later on.) This saves having lots of V3 .cr2 character files hanging about your hard drive. Since a V3 .cr2 can take up 10+ MB, and the .pz2 file takes up 10+ KB, it's a huge help on the hard drive. And creating the Pose files by hand is an SOB. I've done it. My question: what thumbnail does the program use for the .pz2/.fc2 file? Does it use the base V3 thumbnail, does it use the thumbnail you created when you made the V3 .cr2 file, or do you get Mr. Shruggy? (No thumbnail.) Cheers!

Quick and dirty steps...

1. Launch Poser.
2. Load Victoria 3 (sr1.1).
3. INJect the morphs you want to use.
4. Spin up the values for the morphs to create your character.

For a character that uses body morphs, and sets any of them in the 'BODY' group:
5a) Remove all of the morphs deltas via the "! All Head Morphs" and "! All Body Morphs" pose in the "!V3 All Morphs REM" pose library folder (the values of the channels are not affected by these files and this will greatly impact the speed at which IPB will process the file). Save the character in your figure library.

For a character that uses body morphs, but none are set in the 'BODY' group:
5b) Save a pose with morph information.

For a character that uses only 'head' channels:
5c) Save a face file with morph information.

1. Launch IPB.
2. Select options from the Option Dialogs (default settings create character poses that are absolute; when the pose is applied, with the exception of expressions, everything that needs to happen in order to reproduce the character is done by the file being generated).
3. Open the file you saved from poser.
4. Make any manual changes (if you feel the need).
5. Save the file to the appropriate library

You now have a file that is readScript equipped. Start anew in Poser and apply your new file to V3. The morphs will load and the dials will be spun up and you'll have your character all over again.

As for the thumbnail... currently it only precesses ascii text files (cr2/pz2/fc2). So, in short, it creates no thumbnail image. Will it? Honestly, all I can say is I'll look into it.

-Rob

P.S. I'm taking a break for a minute so I can go home... I'll check back once I get there.

yes this utility works in P5 as well as P4 I just tried it, and it works flawlessly. this is so cool guys makes distributing V3 characters effortless.

Thanks, more info helps understand this better. I can see how this is really for developers or distributors of charcters. Pose files should start popin up all over the place for V3 now that this is out. I couldn't figure out how to make a pose file to distribute at all, it was boggling my mind and I'm not good at decyphering pz2 files. This will definately save time. Now I can get to building the perfect Gnome V3 character to beatup on all the elves :P Thanks again, cleared up a lot for me. dialyn - clearer for me, how about you? I often wear a dunce cap with poser, glad that I'm not the only one confused sometimes.

Here's a suggestion on the thumbnail... In Pro Pak, at least, since you create a CR2 that you will probably later remove, you can use the png file the CR2 generated for your new PZ2 (rename if you renamed the PZ2). You'll probably want to do a rendered version for your thumbnail if you are redistributing. The utility works very nicely. Rob wrote up some nice, even if quick and dirty, instructions. Thanks, Rob. Cris

one of the things it was hard for me to get my head around was removing all the morphs before using the program. it turns out that even though you remove the morphs the Cr2 retains the dial settings for those morphs so the program can simply search through all the dial settings and insert an injector into the new pose file for each non zero morph. and as robert said if you are not using full body morphs(morphs that affect more then one body part)you can save a PZ2 and use that in the program instead. going from pz2 to pz2 with injectors in seconds. ths program shows you the whole file and even lets you manually drop in mat pose lines(if you are familiar with the formatting for that)in order to create a compleate "load at one go" character.

Bookmark

ditto

Bookmark :o)

Fascinating stuff here. :)

Yup

So the INJection Pose Builder, does it take all the information such as textures or material settings from the cr2 and store those in the pose generated file? or do those have to then be added to the script? Also, is there a PDF or manual with this? or just a really long readme.txt

no it doesn't add the texture or material setting but it does show the resulting pose in a window into which you can add material information manually, allowing you the luxury of not having to open the file again in notepad to edit. Actually it's not really complicated enough to need a PDF or manual.the short instructions that robert gave are enough to get it done.

Could have fooled me. It still seems confusing. And I am tired of having to continually buy things to make Vicky 3 work. She is a modular monster...and it causes me to worry about how many add-ons Daz Studio is going to demand if one figure reguires this much support.

That would be great. I think pictures make all the difference as to how to make things work. Would be really appreciated. I know V3 will work without this program. It's just that to make her work better, she seems to be demanding of more and more. You have the base. Then you have the head morphs. The body morphs. The textures. The program so you can use V2 textures on V3 (optional, I know). Then clothes because if you aren't clever about translating V2 clothes to V3, you have to start all over. And she's a memory hog to boot. No, I'm not having fun with V3. but I will be happy to spend $1.99 more on her if the program works to simplify her.

Dialyn, V3 does not need this to make her work. She does need morphs and the packaging in modules only facilitated d/l for those who still have dial-up and also gave you the ability to choose which packages you wanted. The primary use that I can see for this is to create a distributable file. It is quite easy to use. The other is if you create characters or have sets of particular morphs from V3 that you like to use, you can create a pose file to load them rather than creating a CR2 which contains copies of all the memory intensive morphs over and over. Think of it this way: You have 10 characters in your character library. Each has the same number of morphs, but they are tweaked slightly different to create your different characters. That means you have 10 copies of each of those morphs. With the readscript pose file, there is one set of those same morphs and the readscript goes and gets each morph but only when you apply the pose file. You still have all 10 characters, but in a much smaller file that doesn't have the morphs until you use it. Ten characters...ONE set of stored morphs. And because a person must have the OBJ and morphs in order for the pose file to work, the file can now be distributed. For personal use, even if I don't want to distribute, I use the utility so I won't have copies of the morphs in multiples either. My runtime is huge enough already. I hope this makes enough sense to you. It's just that it's new. And though it seems more complicated, it is more efficient...at least to me it is. Can't speak for anyone else. Cris

Sorry, Dialyn, you were posting when I was. :) People seem to think this is so complicated. They don't understand why they have to buy so much for one character to work. This is one package that was broken up into three. Victoria 2 had over 100 morphs. Pretty big at the time. Victoria 3 has about 450. Not only would a single d/l have been very long, but when you opened her up, you'd be scrolling and scrolling to get to the various morphs if they were at either end of the list when working. Think of how long the list was for V2 and now triple that. By using the morph injections, you could choose to have that long list or you could just use the morphs you find useful. For all the variety of the full ethnic head morphs, I rarely use them because I like to create my characters through individual morphs. That's one whole set of morphs off my list that I don't need to scroll through or take up memory. I am so much happier with this model. I have some models where there's just translation and scale dials for a body part because I don't have any individual morphs on them. Now that, to me, is efficient. Good luck, Cris

I honestly understand why people love Vicky 3's flexibility. For whatever reason, I just hate using her. I love what other people do. For me, she's a waste of space. I know I'm the only one who dislikes her. I'm not out to change anyone's mind. I find her difficult to use and I'm not going to spend money on Mike 3 as a result. It just makes me worry about the Daz Studio because I don't think I want to start with a program that is going to demand add on after add on after add on to do what I would like to do. I don't have the computer memory or the patience or the money to continually buy module after module. It's okay. I think the Daz world will be robust without my participation in it. And as long as you have non-modular cuteness going, I'll be there for those.

...

IPB pays no attention to material settings... it wasn't meant to. I didn't see the need to duplicate what 'MAT Pose Edit' already does (and does quite well. Granted, not available on Mac.). I did, however, include functions to work with the information in a 'MAT' pose. Specifically, the 'Manual readScript Insertion' function, found at the bottom of the 'Options' menu as well as the right-click(PC)/option-click(Mac) menu, is one that allows you to simply browse to the file (in this case, a 'MAT' Pose) you wish to reference. In doing so, IPB will create the readScript link to that file. I've also included an 'Append > To End...' function, located in the 'File' menu as well as the middle-click(PC)/control-click(Mac) menu, that allows you to browse to a file (again, in this case, a 'MAT' pose) and have its contents added to the end of the displayed file.

As far as a PDF, there isn't currently... but I'll see about creating one (even if it means doing it on my own time).

And as for needing to buy things to make V3 work... You don't NEED to buy things to make her work, she works fine without this utility. Is she more complex than any other figure out there? Sure, but such is the way things go when technological advances are rolled into a product like V3... it's part of growing. With evolution, comes change. With change, comes the need to learn new things. If that wasn't the case... we'd all still be limited to Posette (no offense to those who hold Posette near and dear). And please remember, this isn't coming from someone that doesn't know what its like 'on the other side of the fence.' I've been a part of this community for many years longer than I've been employed by DAZ. Fortunately, I've had the unique opportunity to see both sides of the fence in an 'up close and personal' kind of way. Plain and simple, Vitoria 3 was created the way she was to get around dead ends in the application for which she was created. I couldn't possibly be more honest... and truth be told, I'm affraid to count the hours I've personally spent on research and development (both independently and for DAZ) to get around the limitations. A stagnent market eventually dies... it MUST grow to survive.

This utility started as a personal project (with no intentions of releasing it). After having spent some [of my own] time on it, I saw a way to use it in DAZ's production pipeline to speed things up (still, without plans to release it). After some discussion with my co-workers, and subsequent discussions with the PTB, it was decided to polish it a little and go ahead and release it. We viewed IPB as a fast and easy way to foster 3rd party development. That said, IPB does exactly what it was intended to do, speed up the pipeline... it just turns out that it isn't exclusively DAZ's pipeline any longer.

-Rob

bookmark and a question.... I apologize if this was asked already. LOL! If I load ALL my V3 morphs, create a character using them, save the CR2, and make an INJ pose with this program...will the empty morphs be injected as well? Or just the ones I used? If so...how do I clean out the empty morphs? The Dial Cleaner? (I still haven't gotten it to work correctly.)

Dialyn, I am curious, what is hard about using V3 for you? She isn't modular if you don't want her to be. I got the face and body morphs and that seemed fair. I liked that there was an optional male pak of morphs and an optional hag set of morphs. You don't have to buy 'em if you won't use 'em, and they won't automatically be in her, slowing you down... What I did was inject the morphs that I usually use into V3, then saved her to the Library. I don't have a super computer, so it took awhile, but the work was worth the effort. I can just load her in quickly now. :)

IPB will only create readScript referrences for channels that have values of anything other than zero (or rounded to zero, if the 'Round Thousandths' option is selected). NOTE: See step 5a in post #9. -Rob

Well I'm a happy camper. Saving my runtime and easy dirtutable files were something I was really interested in. I'm glad daz decided to release it and put it in PClub too. Thanks for the explainations, I'll snag this one big time.

Many thanks for the quick response Rob! Exactly what I wanted to know! ;o) -Em

Thanks for creating this and getting it released Rob. I went through the readscript info on your site and got stuck when it came to editing the cr2 by hand. The page you reference that tells about the different parts of the cr2 wasn't available the few times I tried to find the information and I was quite stuck. I like to create a character and use it for a series of pictures. I'm excited about being able to continue this with V3 now with your program. :) (Not that I couldn't do it but I was getting tired of writing down which injectors to use for each char and reinjecting every time I started poser.)

Caly, I'm afraid I bought all the V3 stuff before I realized what a pain she'd be for me to work with. Everyone else seems so happy with her that I thought, "oh, this is great." Then she proceeded to stall out my computer each and every time I try to inject more than one morph into her. I know its because I have a wimpy computer, but I can't afford to keep upgrading. So I'll mark this off as one of those things that I can enjoy everyone else use and scratch my head about why it's such a misery to me. Unfortunately, I bought into the head, body, makeup, and male morphs and even some clothes before the reality really sunk into my dense little head. Mike 3? Oh no, I'm running far and running fast before he can catch up with me. Doesn't mean that I don't delight in what all you are doing. Just because she's not for me doesn't mean I can't enjoy what everyone else is doing. I never learned how to swim either. Sink like a stone. And so does V3 on my computer system.

Thanks Rob...this will be yet another invaluable tool in my arsenal of Poser-related programs! (V2-V3 Texture Converter, UV Mapper Pro, Dial Cleaner, MAT Pose Creator, etc.) :o). Laurie

As a result of concern (mine) for possible/probable confusion surrounding the use of REM poses to remove deltas of a figure you aim to process through IPB, Ryan will be posting an update for IPB shortly. The update IS NOT to the actual application, rather it contains support files to help make using it easier. The support files consist of a single pose (which references an included source file in the "!DAZ" folder) for applying to a figure just prior to saving in your library. This pose will remove ALL delta information (in a standard V3 cr2) at once. No longer do you need to apply separate files (as in step 5a of post #9), now you can apply this one "!IPB Prep" pose. Also included in the update is an html and pdf version of the help file... per the request. I hope these updates make IPB that much easier to use. Thank all of you who've chosen to support the effort. And to those expressing your gratitude, you have mine. -Rob

woohoo, great additions. thanks for the update :)

Awesome!! Thanks for the info Rob!

Thanks Rob, although I found the program to be straightforward and easy to use. But one can always use more info ;o). Laurie