Hi there, Some may ask why this tutorial exists. The answer is very few people know how to make morph targets without using dials. But yet there are hundreds of morph character packs for sale. So now you may ask how is that possible. The answer is alot of people use free, for sale, and base morph targets to make new ones they sell as there own. FOr years I have watched it go on. People taking this persons Vicki2 morphs and filtering them into the Teen. That person taking that person's Mil Girl face and putting it on Vicki and selling it. Now with the inimesh you will see people taking Vicki pachages and creating, freak, M3, Stephanie packs. It is hard to tracj a morph when it is put onto another figure. But not impossible. hehe. So here is what to do. I have been doing it for years but I thought maybe if I share, now that it is popping up again, it might help someone. ---------------------------------------------- 1) Zoomed in a head is like a mountain with hundres of nooks and crannies to hide in. Fine 5 or more locations and create a decernable pattern or patterns. You can do initials, names, happy faces, etc. Use three different patterns at least. Put them where they are nor noticable but make the pattern clear. 2) After you have created all your patterns in various spots make images like the one shown above for your records with a map of where they are on the mesh. 3) Just that easy. :) ----------------------------------------------------- Now there are ways people can try to conceal your morph in their work. 1) Apply it a a minute amount mized with other morphs 2)Smooth it in a modelling program 3) Try to restore mesh to proper contours using conform features. -------------------------------------------------------- Well all of these are great ideas but because a morph is meant to be different than the original, your pattern, however weak, will try to remanifest at higher settings. Watermarks can be 3d as well, having decernable patterns from different angles. ---watermarking your custom models like hair, eyes, clothes, etc------ I used to make my name in mesh letters, SHrink it down to point size and weld it to regions of the mesh. It would not weld and be invisible to almost and zoom unless extracted and rescalled. There are tons of ways to identify your own work. This tutorial is a very crude example. make patterns complex and stylized. Don'g go by my crude example. Find interesting places to stuff them. heheThis is just one method I use. Personally I always use about 10 seperate patterns in 10 seprate locations. That is what I did on the V3 morphs I made for Daz. While this approach may notprove that you made a morph from scratch it can prove someone else used your morph in theirs. Similar principles work on textures. Goodluck and please feel free to share this at PoserPros and other forums. Regards, Anton

PS: Region used in image above is about half the size of V3 pinky nail. Sorry for all the typos. I though have proof read. Somday...hehehe How I make sense up there.

so sad that it's come to this. thanks, never thought to so a watermark in the mesh or texture.

That's elegant! Another method, easier to spot in text form, is to set up a checksum with a series of deltas, using numbers that will show up as zero for any possible setting of the morph. (Like 2.436E-008)

I'm not quite sure I get it. If you have, say, V3's face and use magnets or some other program OTHER THAN DIALS to make a character, won't the initial signature still be present somewhere? If the signature is for instance in the neck and I morph the nose and eye region I won't have altered the signature, yet the morph is still mine isn't it? Just making sure I understand when the sig is good for. It's not like I'm going to claim that I have modeled V3 from scratch, but morphing a character into another character is afaik "legal", isn't it?! And Ockham, it sure sounds nice but you might as well have said it in chinese G

The signature is only in a morph target so if you didn't use a morph with it there will be now watermark pattern present. The point it to ideed make morphs from scratch using magnets and such. Or sticking to making INJ poses when you do want to use other people's morphs.

Anton writes: "FOr years I have watched it go on. People taking this persons Vicki2 morphs and filtering them into the Teen. That person taking that person's Mil Girl face and putting it on Vicki and selling it." I understand this point of view entirely, particularly when it comes to selling someone else's work. But it also seems to me that in the early days of P4, a lot of progress was made in terms of moving the community forward by sharing morphs and propagating them from character to character. Technically Anton is right that a morph is its creator's work and copyright, but in another way it is just an extension of the mechanics of Poser. There's no Poser dial for "pout", but once someone makes a pout morph available, the ability of Poser is enhanced. A morph target itself is not a thing of beauty like a picture, or even a texture or a full mesh item. Is it really worth while going to the extent of watermarking it - and presumably, subsequently examining every character that comes out in microscopic detail to check whether YOUR watermark is hidden there? It's a shame if we have to be so defensive about absolutely everything.

Don't forget that Traveler closed the first version of MorphWorld because people were using his stuff without permission, even in commercial work, so this isn't new or (unfortunately) hypothetical.

I wasn't forgetting. However, the thought of someone hunched (metaphorically) over a series of meshes searching for their watermark in "Vicki brow raised right" at even 0.02 strength strikes me as, well, sad really.

"I wasn't forgetting. However, the thought of someone hunched (metaphorically) over a series of meshes searching for their watermark in "Vicki brow raised right" at even 0.02 strength strikes me as, well, sad really." And as a practical matter how does one "inspect" all commercial morph packages looking for ones watermark without $$Buying$$them all???

This is really sad. I thought the whole idea of the Poser communities WAS to share works, and ideas. Typically if a image is changed enough, then it is considered a new work of art. If someone spends 5 days working a morph into a different figure, then is that not enough to call it a new work? If the original creator is so worried about that, then let them create the same morphs for every damned figure out there. I agree with you phantast. The thought of myself or others spending hours poured over their monitor looking for "thieves" is prety disgusting. I'm working on stuff I hope to maybe sell some day myself, and if someone takes parts of it, works on it, and carries it over into other characters, then my work becomes even more of a value to the poser community, and gains a life of it's own. Without utilization like this, characters like Puppet would never exist. Is Puppet based on Koshini? Hell Yeah! Does Puppet sell more Koshini models? You bet! Next thing you know, the people who create models will want royalties from people creating clothes for their models! Better yet, Maybe CL should also want a cut of the profits from Daz, and every other creator out there, because if you didn't use poser, then they wouldn't exist. Think it can't happen? Look at the Nintendo franchise. If people want to make games for the Gamecube or the older Nintendo hardware, it had to be licensed through Nintendo proper. Something similar came up like this a week or so ago, and it was pretty ugly. Tis the season to be Jolly..... Stop the witch hunting people, and get back to creating art.

Paranoia will destroy-yuh... (Just bookmarking) There are no watermarks in this post. ;) Cool idea though. Very Matrixy Joe

Also: This post alone may make some people think twice. Hell... I've thought about it 5 times now and I don't even make morphs. LOL Merry Christmas to you geeks (that includes me), Joe

Typically if a image is changed enough, then it is considered a new work of art <<< No. That is not true. Some people believe that, and tell each other that, but it simply is not true. You should spend a little time in the copyright forum.

Besides which, if you spend days jiggling morph dials to create a new figure/face you CAN distribute it - as a Mor or Inj pose file. You can also distribute your own, newly made by directly warping the mesh, morphs in a carrier CR2 or as a new injectable morph. All that you are forbidden to do is pass off something made with other people's morphs as your own work. (And since Anton knows where to look it's hardly going to take a lot of poring over the screen - he probably has a PZ3 set with the cameras pointing at the relevant areas!)

Wow , can not believe a couple of the posts here, taking someone else's morph and passing it off as your own is every bit as bad as taking someone's texture , reworking it and passing it off as your own. Geezzz morphs take hours to create from scratch, enough to create a new characters takes a lot of time, just as making a texture from scratch takes time. We all understand and agree it is wrong to steal someone's else's texture, why on earth can we not all agree it is just as wrong to steal someone's original morphs??

To me the only people who would take issue with this are the people who are expoiting others work and are just mad. It has been my experience thata those first to scream "foul" and "witchhunt" are the people you going to have to look out for. Stealing and exploiting someone elses work for money or celebrity or kudos is more despicable and loathesome than any of these false romantic notions of group effort and creativity. "Community" and "collaboration" have nothing to do with sneaking, concealment, lying, and exploitation. What is truelly sad is people not supporting the efforts of those in the community. It is sad that people try to demoralize those who struggle to protect them selves from those who steal. It is a shame, when people's desires to do "what they want to do" are stronger that the difference between "Right and Wrong"

I guess the part that stumps me is the detection. If an honest merchant has to buy a copy of a suspect item to examine it closely and determine if it has stolen components, how does the merchant recover the costs of all that detection work? Costs in time, money and lost sales. My feeling on this is that every honest merchant should, if asked, provide the documentation to show he/she actually created the item. Show screencaps of some of the steps in Photoshop to create a texture, show screencaps of some of the steps in a 3D app to create the morph. Then if we go to a merchant and he refuses to provide any documentation, we don't buy the item. So it would be the merchants policing themselves, and we would quickly know whom we could trust.

In other words, mateo, guilty unless proven innocent. Anton's idea at least is a way of proving someone guilty.

Re: screencaps.

OK, I agree that artists need to keep documentation showing that their work is indeed their work. But IMHO, expecting every artist to keep screen captures of their steps is over the top. Just yesterday Windows started screaming at me that my working harddrive was full. Big space eaters? The working files for this character & texture (planned to be a future freebie, BTW) were 450 MB. Files for my last posted image, including the custom textures, were 580 MB. So, almost needless to say, I could provide a copy of my working files to an indepent arbitrator if needed. You want me to keep screen captures while I'm working, too? I'm sorry, but that's where I put my foot down. It's easy for an infringer, and it's a pain for me. That's one hoop I'm not going to jump through.

I used to think that making stuff for Poser figures would be relatively straight forward but all this back stabbing, forgery, and double dealing is pretty frightening. The trouble with this sort of thing is that someone like me, a nube, may try to make something to give back to the community, then the community comes out with whips and gallows to lash that person down when in actual fact they know nothing of the rules involved in the distribution of things and really only need to have these explained to them to stop it happening again. Then there are the merchants who, for whatever reason, knowingly use someone elses work, with the intention to sell and I believe that they are the ones who really should know better and who should be lashed to the ground with no mercy. In the recent past I've seen both of these senario's occur here and have been shocked in the main about the way many people react and the words of malice used against those people. Anton, you have now written a couple of very good, educational threads in this forum and I really do believe they should be required reading for all nube's who join this forum. I think in this forum these things are more important to know than the R'osity TOS. Do you think it would be possible to have these threads attached to the header?, mind you I guess it all would depend on nube's going to read them, but they could always be directed there if the subject came up again. Sorry for going on. 8) Catlin

Anton's idea at least is a way of proving someone guilty. How can THIS be read as an attack on you, Anton?! Phantast is as far as I can see, saying that you're right.

"In other words, mateo, guilty unless proven innocent. Anton's idea at least is a way of proving someone guilty." Oh my. So sorry Phantast, I completely read what you types completely differently. lol I was wondering there for a sec why you where upset. The way I read it was: "In other words, mateo is guilty until proven innocent, Antons' way of proving someone guilty." Oh my, so sorry again. hehe. I just came from reading some ver long emails in broken english translations and my mind is oviously wired wrong this evening. Thanks eryoka1 for pointing out my misreading. Sorry again Phantast. I removed my response which was simple and nothing horrible. Glad Eyoka1 saw I misunderstood. :)

Okay off to do X-mas shopping. Woke up way to late today. Hope everyone is almost done with theirs. Thanks for all the feedback pro and con. Hope people will see that it is more important to support those who try to protect their work than to worry about why/how they protect it. Regards, Anton

PheonixRising, you almost accuse me of trying to steal from other developers.. follow a few of my older posts, which follow for the last 3-5 weeks of working on one clothing item, and trying to figure things out like conforming, and using magnets to create clothing morphs for poses. And telling people to "watch out for me" is VERY inaccusable, especially since I've NEVER even sold anything at all! Just because I don't happen to agree with YOU, does NOT make me a liar or thief. I believe an apology is in order. And I don't believe my opinions of the community working together are false at ALL! LOOK at all the freebies given out this month, and all the great sales! That's what attracted me to Poser.. not just the program itself (sometimes its just a pain in the butt!), but the people here like Geep, who are helpful, and spend MUCH time helping each other out. PhilC, Dr. Geep, Neftis, and Lady Little Fox as well have all been VERY helpful to me, and I'd like to publically thank each of them yet again, for their assistance. I actually started modeling poser stuff back in august, and you've yet to see anything released from me, freebie, or for sale. I'm still learning, and don't want to put something out with annoyances that I've run into with other people's releases. Though with some of the recent ill will posts of late (not just this one) I wonder if it the comminuty is even worth bothering with. I agree with Catlin MC's post completely.

Heh I was wondering too, Anton, and for a moment I though I had misread it G Garee, if you know Anton, you also know he's not fond of thieves :o) And given the amount of his work found on P2P networks, I can't say I really blame him. Sometimes the wording could be better ;o) but... I must say, the first time I found one of my things on P2P I was thrilled, but after a while it gets a tad annoying. Still my base thought stays: People who download from those places probably wouldn't have bought it ANYWAY, so it's not REALLY money lost. Not that I condone it, but I can't throw a fit over it either. With things so easily copied and distributed as computer programs/models, it's a hopeless job to stop it all. So I use my time on something less futile :o)

That's it.. I don't know him, ernyoka1, but he almost accuses me in that post of trying to sell people's morphs in products I don't even sell! It would be one thing if I had been a retailer of poser packages, and had done some dubious things, but all I've ever done is assist people when my meger poser skills can helps, and beg for assistance from the people here. This is the second time in a few weeks that a poser artist here has flown off the handle about something, and frankly it makes me wonder quite a bit about people I'm buying from. Needless to say Anton won't have to worry about me stealing anything of his, because I just won;t buy anything ever from him after this. Maybe he should just ostracize the entire poser community, and then he won't have to worry at all! I'm sure Kazaa and the like are possible lost business to some of these guys, but we were not even talking about that. I'll support the people selling things that want to grow the community, and create a constant expanding creative base, NOT people who abuse the community that they supposedly serve.

Gereee, I do not "Almost" say or do anything, especially accuse. When I do I use names, not inuendo and am sure in my facts. Noone called you a liar or thief so you will be waiting for that apology for along time. lol Stop looking for meaning where non exist. The post is geared towards those looking to protect their work and otherwise has nothing to do with you at all. This is not an ill will post at all. lol it is a tutorial. I would wonder if you really understand what this post is about. hehe Anton

Sorry, I have some problems understanding this technically: As far as I have learnt here a morph is a variation of a mesh. This base mesh could be seen as a morph from the state, when all points of this mesh are in one place. (At {0;0;0}) So what is the difference between creating a morph from a mesh and creating a morph from a mesh where another morph has been applied before? (in terms of stealing someone elses work) Maybe I understand something wrong? Can someone enlighten me? %-

Morph targets are deformations of the base mesh and then loaded back onto the mesh for a desired affect. "original" morph targets are made in a program that has deformation tools. Generally, unless otherwise stated, these morph targets people make are not allowed to be used , by OTHER people, to make a new morph target for sale or distribution. Example, you can use magnets or a modeling package to make your own morphs for sale or distribution. You cannot generally, unless otherwise stated, use Dials you spin in Poser, using other people's free/sale morphs, to make a new morph target for sale or distribution. Basically it all boils does to : Do NOT use someone elses hard work to make something and then try to distribute or sell it. This, I think you would agree, is just fair and ethical. This tutorial is designed to aid those making their own morph targets from scratch(like Daz) in protecting their hard work from those who collect other people's work, mix it together, and try to pass it off as their own for either attention or money. What you do in your own home is up to you. But distribution other peoples work, in ways that allow other people access to it without sale or credit to the oroginal creator is not allowd, unless otherwise allowed by the creator. Even so, many people rip off others and then say "you can use this for free!". That is why you should avoid freesources for commercial development and why the tutorial exists. Hope that explains it.

Sorry if I seem thin skinned, but you did quote a number of phrases I posed when I posted, and it looked directed at me. What I'm maybe not understanding is taking say a mesh morph of say, koshini, and using that say base morph in a new koshini character? Isn't that sort of what Puppet does for Koshini? expands and adds on her own original morphs? I do see what you are saying, but some characters have 100+ morphs and the thought of someone spending their time tearing those morphs apart looking for thieves is kinda silly to me. How many hours would that take for just ONE well done character? Hell, I don't even have the time to USE that many morphs in 1 character, let alone try to tear them apart. LOL! Sorry, but it really sounds like paranoia to me....

Thank's Anton, for your explanation. Yes I understand your intent, that someones work should be protected. (And fully agree with you!) But - honestly - technically I still have problems to follow: If I create a morph from Victoria I create a modification of a copyrighted mesh. If I apply one of ex. your morphs previously and set the dials and then create a morph based on this morphed Victoria, I have created a modification of a modified and doubble copyrighted mesh. If the second case is 'stealing someones work' - why not the first case, where I also used someones hard work to make something? I can feel(!), it's a difference - but it's not really clear to me, why?

Hmm interesting post, bip77....

Daz allows people to make morph targets on a base for sale and distribution using methods that protect distribution of the mesh. Making a morph off of a base is fine since a base in considered static and doesn't reflect anyone elses morph efforts. The point is if you make a original morph it is your modification. That is allowed. If you use one of my morphs, it is part of MY work. that is not allowed. I and others do not make morphs for development of commercial morph products or freebies other than poses. The work that goes into look for infringement in irrelevant really. Myself and other know how to do this quickly. Most people really don't need to worry about how we do it uless we find an infringement.

Most people really don't need to worry about how we do it uless we find an infringement. Sorry Anton, I disagree with you completely here. No people don't know how to look for "your" morphs, you can do that yourself, but they DO need to know how you do it quickly so THEY can do it quickly and protect their own work. See this is swings and roundabouts isn't it? Suggesting to someone how to protect their mesh/morph is one thing, but a valid point is, how do you find that quickly in amongst a whole bunch of others. If you're going to tell people how to do it, you might just as well tell them how to find it quick so that their loss isn't so great if it's sold or distributed in freestuff (which I'm sure you can associate with). Yes I appreciate that this gives those who would steal an insight into how you do things, but surely simply posting this tutorial gives potential thieves warning on what to look for? Even if hidden some thieves can be strangely persistant. :)

So the point is that Daz explicitely allows(!) modification of their mesh and allows these modifications (but not the mesh) to be distributed - while morph crators normally do not give their permission, yes? But then this means, that if I want to distribute a morph target for a mesh, I must also always check if it's explicitely allowed to do so by the creator, right? (And this would mean, that a lot of distributed morphs should be considered theft?) Sorry, but with all the recent copyright talks I just want to know exactly(!) what's considered theft and what not. (I hope that slowly I get the point...)

If Anton does a cheek morph for V2 and distributes it no violation Daz allows this. I create a big nose V2 morph and distribute it, again no violations Daz allows this. HOWEVER If I load Antons cheek morph and include his morphed geometry with my big nose morph and call it it my own Anton can check the cheeks of my morphs and see his little watermark and use that as a bassis for a claim of infringing on his material. What I've seen in the past year is people taking good morphs and packing them together from different people and claiming all of them as their works, and they aren't. Or taking a freebie morph adding a morph they did and selling it in a package again they didn't do the freebie morph so there is an infringement. Now if Anton has his cheek morph and its watermarked in the polys like his example picture, and I have my big nose morph and I have my watermark in my morph, is someone comes along and takes either one or both and distributes them and there is a claim Say Anton discovers it and posts an announcement, I could come along and go well yea better look into that and look for my watermark, may be there, may not be, but I've covered myself by PUTTING a watermark in my morph. maybe that gives a better example of how this could be used. Then again I've eatten a box of cookies and am on a sugar rush and need to go crash now plonk

Questor, A long as people use only their own work they will have no problems. And people should avoid using freebie morphs for commercial developemnt. It would be a shame to put alot of work into a product kust to get it pulled. People don'tt need to look for my morphs other than me. And telling them how to find them is the last thing I would do. Can do that myslef. Others should never tell anyone where their watermarks are. You obviously misread what I said somewhere. You seem kinda huffy. If you read the whole post you would have seen where I recommended saving cameras in angles with diagrams for locating their personal watermarks. :P Anton K now that the thread has degenerated far enough where people aren't reading everything, I can be reached by email. hehe

No you misunderstand me Anton, I don't mean for you to tell people how to look for your morphs, but rather to explain how to "rapidly" search through the morphs of a character to check for their own. Watermarking is one thing, but if there's (as I've seen in a couple) 50 or 60 morphs included in a character, some of them around the same object (eyes, nose, chin) it would help to have a clue to search rapidly than to dig through each morph at length in an editor to see if the "watermark" is there. I wouldn't dream of asking you how to look for your morphs. Just an idea how to do it quickly rather than the apparent hours it might otherwise take. Not huffy at all, sorry if my prose seems rather short, it's been like that for years. Just how I am I'm afraid. :) On that, thank you. I DO read threads, in their entirety. However keeping camera angles, details and info on "where" a person has watermarked a morph is ok for that morph, when you have a large collection of them, or, as is often the case, a large collection centred on certain body parts it becomes unweildy. Also when it's included with other similar morphs one ends up hunting through a whole bunch of the same thing. I think I get what your saying. "Only need to check one part - where the watermark is" but you hint that there's a fast way to do that. I'm curious what that fast way is. Also, I don't see that the thread has degenerated at all, but that's your opinion.

So how exactly do you distribute the morph, without distributing the mesh? Is the key in the cr2 files, or what? That's something that no one has made clear for me yet. I've had some morphs I did for Koshini I was going to give away (finished about 20 back in early sept.), but I could never find out what files I need to include. Typically, I'll make the morph in lightwave, save the object, then load it in as a morph in poser, name the dials, and then save that new figure out for my own use. Let's say I save it as Koshini2.. what then can I distribute that will include those new morphs, without violating LLF's copyright? I don;t think this thread has degenerated either.. I'm learning what Anton is talking about, and this might lead me to understand how to distribute my work for others...

If I remember correctly you can distribute the obj with everything but the "V" lines removed. This will make it only usable as a morph target and not importable as a mesh. You would have to do that in a text editor or something. There are tutorials around for that somewhere. Questor, there are no problems as long as you don't use other people's morphs in the ones you sell or distribute. The buyer of packs isn't ecpected to find watermarks. Only the authors looking for their own need worry about it. The locations of them and patterns isn't something that should ever be devulged to the public. If you are making morphs for distribution or sale just only those you make from scratch. I realize some people cannot make morph targets.. Those people are left to selling/distributing poses only.

shakes head Never mind, I'm somehow not being clear on my question but it's too late to bother with making it nice and simple. Thanks for the tip here, it is extremely useful and a good starting point for other forms of protection, and hopefully a lot of the morph/prop makers around will consider what you've suggested here to protect themselves from the happy wan***s that think they deserve a free lunch.

Gareee why don't you contact Lady Little Fox and ask about your morphs. I'm sure that she'd be willing to help you out.

Hehee... I understand what you mean Questor. You want to know how Anton searches quickly for his watermarks. I don't think you really need to even open Poser to check for the existence of those watermarks. Anton only needs to know in what part of the geometry his watermarks should be and he can have a program to quickly scan the morph target geometry in search of the watermark. Developing such a program should be a minor thing, me thinks. I may be wrong, but I sure as hell wouldn't search for the watermark in Poser! I'm not an expert in making morph targets, but I do know something about computing. Calculating offsets and deltas in the geometry should reveal an infringement, right? Not really different than the techniques used in steganographic software (ie. hiding messages in lossless or slightly lossy image files). Anton can correct me if I'm wrong.

this is an interesting and useful idea Anton ..shame it only helps for vertex editing ... ah well I use various digital watermarking techniques to tag all my textures. I've only had to go to court twice over images, thank gods. (while I was working in advertising) And for people who think "morphs should be shared freely" you try spending days working on one to have some idiot come and swipe it, file off the serial number and sell it, thereby cutting into you profit for the work, your salary if you will. You'll find you suddenly become more conscious and irritated about that sort of thing. Lyrra

hehe

Ooh, now that's a good point 12rounds. I can see how that might be useful. Looking for a series of vertex settings that match the variation used in the object file. That would be relatively simple. Heck a dos batch file could run for that so it shouldn't be difficult to set up a Visual Basic or other script to do the same thing. Thanks for giving me a clue there. It wouldn't matter what the morph setting was to identify the signature as the vertex/vertice markers would be there anyway. Thanks. Finally I get a clue, how cool is that? :) Lyrra. Traveller used to share his morphs freely, a hell of a lot of morphs as well. So there's nothing wrong with sharing morphs freely and working for hours on something to give it away. (personally I've been doing that for years). But, I do agree with you completely about people who think they should be allowed to make money on things that are made available as "Funstuff" - and I don't mean in images/animations but by selling the item in a store. It was IIRC the fact that people were using Traveller's morphs to make for-sale charcters that cheesed him off in the first place, and not just him. Now he sells a cd of his morphs with commercial permission, a great "free" resource was lost due to the selfish ignorance of a few. Thankfully that resource at least did stay, albeit in another form and I don't begrudge Traveller a single penny of what he asks. There's nothing at all wrong with working for hours on something that you then share freely with other users of the program, there's a hell of a lot wrong with people who want to make money selling that product because they're too damn lazy to do their own original work. Considering how often some people are ripped off I find it amazing that they still stay and make things for the software. One other thing though, what Anton has posted here doesn't just help for vertex editing, it can be adapted for a variety of purposes although adapting this for image protection could be difficult. There is a piece of software available that encodes a signature layer into an image, much in the method that 12rounds mentions. It was developed some time ago and I do recall a free download that enables encoding into an image - not watermarking, it's an actual encryption. So texture maps could be likewise protected with that encoding (though obviously not the entire image and every pixel. As we've seen people will even steal small sections of texture maps.

First, to make it clear, I appreciate Anton's idea. I don't want to be misunderstood in this point. But I feel like nobody understands what my point is: If I create a nose morph and distribute it with Anton's cheek morph - as MachineClaw wrote - it's not okay. Yes, of course not. Easy to understand. No problem. But let's assume I load V2 and apply Mr.Doe's full face morph (all parts of the face involved) and now start to modify this face by using 30 dials (from the 'standard' dials) and make from this a new full face morph: How is this? If I distribute this morph nobody can extract from this (without knowing which dials I have modified) Mr. Doe's full face morph. It's the same like nobody can extract from Mr. Doe's full face morph V2's original face-mesh. I mean: Do you see where my problem is? For me it seems, that in the end in both cases I have just modified a 'face', someone else has created before. And then I really can't find, where I can read that this is allowed to do for meshes (as Anton mentioned). Sorry for disturbing this thread again with this question, but where and who should I ask?

As regards making morphs for Vickie 2 you need to contact Daz3D and check with them, though they do have some information on their site in regards to this. You can (AFAIK) distribute morphs made with vickie's face provided they have been squished or encoded. I think Russel's RTE Encoder (freestuff here or at PoserPros) does this and there's probably something else that you can use as well. If you run a search in this forum on Morph squishing that should result in some information on how to do it. If you use Mr. Doe's face morphs and make an entirely new face you will need the permission of Mr. Doe in order to distribute that face because your face is based on his morphs, therefore without his permission you would be infringeing on Mr. Doe's work unless permission was given either in the text file or by Mr. Doe. However, if you use a MOR pose for Mr. Doe's morphs then you can distribute that pose file as it only contains dial information and would not infringe on Mr. Doe's work because people would need Mr Doe's face morphs for the MOR pose to work. In all circumstances though it's always best to ask the original creator first before doing anything.

V3 has a creator model no morphs in the file at all, his was designed for content creators to use. I think there was something like this for V2, sorry I cannot remember. if you do the morphs yourself using a 3d program nobody elses morphs, no dial spinning you can do whatever ya need to with it but as this tutorial stated you should mark it with a watermark, images ref's for later use etc. RTE Encoder is one way of distributing to make sure that the person actually has the file as proof they bought or own it, but someone can still take my big nose morph and distribute it. again it's about protexting your work. there are tutorials on applying morphs and the book poser 5 figure secrets is a good book for more information about morphs and files.

*** However, if you use a MOR pose for Mr. Doe's morphs then you can distribute that pose file as it only contains dial information and would not infringe on Mr. Doe's work because people would need Mr Doe's face morphs for the MOR pose to work. *** Thank you, Questor! I think, THIS was the 'missing link'! :-) (Besides asking the original creator)