We all know the situation. Nice character = 129mb file, because of all the morphs, and the character needing the "full-morph V3" to look right. What are our options for optimizing it? Isn't there a python script out there that will "collapse" all those morphs into a single "full body" morph for every body part? I tried doing this by hand, and although it appeared to work, it was too time consuming without a script and prone to error - some body parts would morph while others didn't (not sure why this happens). I know about the tools that prune out "unused" morphs from figures cr2s, but in this case the morphs ARE used, there is just too many of them altogether and this greatly slows down both loading, working, rendering, everything. Does anyone have the magic software solution, how do I keep only the morphs that I specifically want and "collapse" the rest into a mesh? Granted, this makes the mesh un-distributable, but I'm not worried about this since it's only for personal use and to speed rendering/adjustment. I'd be most grateful for any tips. Thanks in advance!

I don't know anything about Python scripts, but could manually spawn a morph for each body part that isn't stock, set the new morphs to 1.00 and use the DAZ REM poses to remove all the DAZ morphs. As long as you don't have to do fingers this should only take about 5-10 minutes.

I understand your problem and have also become obsessed with optimizing 3rd generation figures and their texture maps. My best solution so far is to remove all the unused morphs by hand using morph manager, a time consuming process that has shrunk Mil3 figures to about 5MB (without expressions).

Wouldn't it be possible to export the obj-file, not as a morph target, but as a real figure, and put it in the Geometry folder? Then you make a copy of the blank cr2 (or maybe the one with the expressions in it), and point it to the new obj-file.

may I ask....are the people posting in this thread interested in reducing V3/M3 morphs for what reason.... 1) less confusion when posing? 2) faster load time? 3) less hard drive space? 4) faster manipulation during posing because of 'lighter' figures? or ?????? because fewer morphs do not equate to faster render time, right? You will still have the dense mesh during render? ::::: Opera :::::

The answer is probably "all of the above" :)

Render time is also affected, in my experience, not cause of the polygons, but since each morph has to be "calculated" and, as it were, applied dynamically when it's rendering. As opposed to it already being there in the mesh, requiring no extra calculations.

I'm super-interested to try the OBJ file approach suggested by Marianne... unfortunately I've got no idea how the OBJ files need to be arranged for it to work. Can I really export the whole figure in one file? It seems to me that would pretty much make it into a "statue" from then on :) PS: The most important part for me is that I could take a complicated character and make a "ready-to-use" version that loads quick, doesn't have hundreds of unnecessary morphs, and renders well.

Message edited on: 03/05/2005 18:16

Dispel myth:

#1) Each morph shouldn't need to be calculated dynamically. It should be on an already copied version (if Poser even makes one) of the original mesh. More than likely, Poser directly modifies the geometry vertices when morphing - no need at all to dynamically calculate during renders.

#2) If you export the figure (without posing - definitely no posing) with no translations or rotations, you have a base geometry. If you copy the CR2 from which the figure derived and insert the new geometry .obj name in place of that specified by the 'figureResFile' (most likely only two lines to change in the entire file), you have a new figure with all of the morphs and rigging still available. So, yes you can export a whole figure and get back a new figure.

With morph injection, no INJ/REM morphs will load automatically on the new figure even if it is V3/M3. You can INJ/REM even more morphs since those already used to create the new figure are 'set in stone'.

Message edited on: 03/05/2005 20:06

BookMark

I tired several things myself. I'm sick of figures taking forever to load, open, pose, render, hogging RAM, etc. So the goal is to get the character created perfectly, then crunch it down to a usable size. I did the morph spawn for each body part then created a full body morph. That seems to work the best. If you want to transfer the morphs, use MorphManager. I'm sick of injections not working because there's already a morph sitting a channel I need. So I tried to inject the Bishie body 1 then create a new blMilMan_m3.obj but for each Bishie Body type. I created a new CR2 for each Bishie and pointed them to the new obj file. Sounds like it would work, right? WRONG! The morphs were wack and so were the JPs! sigh I haven't figured out how to make a custom character INJ yet, at least not without crashing Poser. lol. ;p Try the first method. bB

If y'all can give a good expaination of what all this will involve I wiil definately be delighted to hear it. No more P5 crashing when I try to inj the morphs, now that would be cool. 8)

No way to avoid morph injection, but if you have created a finalized character (injections or static morphs) and want to reduce the space consumption (if anything), the best approach is to export as a .obj and create a new cr2 file from the base figure using that .obj. It is the least expensive approach since all of the applied morphs become one static geometry the same size as the base geometry. And you get to keep the morph possibilities and rig to boot!

bookmarking this one I render in Shade now so the morphs aren't a problem there, but setting up the scene in Poser with a couple of fully stacked V3s is a frickin' nightmare Oh yeah, and is there a way to force Poser to use more physical memory in WinXP, it's ridiculous that my hard drive is thrashing away when I've got over 800 megs of free RAM available

By exporting a fully morphed figure and using that as a mesh for a new CR2 you are more-or-less trying to recreate what Glamorous Vickie is, incidently. Yes, there are advantages to that, the figure will take up a lot less memory space, by having mutipe morphs set for the same body part you can wind up with a figure that take up 2 or 3 times the "raw" mesh size in memory. It seems so simple to have a figure with a new, nicer base shape rather than a collection of dial settings. Now, lets talk about the down side: 1. I don't know if Poser can actully export a "perfect" CR2, with the correct group names and morph results, perfectly located in space. 2. If the figure will bend slightly differently- Poser calculates bending fall-off zones drom the raw mesh, not allowing for any morphs, you have just moved the mesh. JCM will also work differently, for the same reason. 3. Clothing isn't going to fit very well. Even if the clothing has morphs that match the morphs you used on the figure there is going to be problems with the bending, as above, and if it doesn't have the matching morphs you are out of luck. The figure is also going to lock all the Full Body Morph Dials in the clothing that have matching names at 0. So, what I'm saying, if you like her shape, you you be better off buying Glamorous Vickie (or Ingenue Vickie if you want a more petite figure), all the work has been done for you, and the clothing actually fits! She has all of the advantages, none of the disadvantages, and as V3 clothing wasn't going to fit very well anyway I took the liberty of reworking most of her joints (especially JCM) to work better with her new shape.

Use Glam and Ingenue all the time already ;) Currently working on a scene with two Glam Vickie alien/human hybrids kidnapping a V3 figure in Dark Places' Back Alley to serve as a new host body My problem is trying to get poser to use the gig and a half of RAM in my system instead of thrashing my virtual memory to pieces

I don't have huge amounts of RAM, and I use a pretty old version of Windows. I hit the memory problems sooner. I find Poser improves a lot with regular reboots, especially before any big renders. That may be partly down to Windows.

That Vicky of yours looks like a certain new Cylon babe Jim!

Ha! I never noticed until you mentioned it!

She's all in your mind! Cylon tricks, I tell ya! :)

Just shorten her hairstyle and put her in something flaming red and you've got Baltar's devilsh Muse!

I can't decide whether Gaius Baltar is to be pitied or admired. On the one hand, having virtual sex whenever you want (and a constant companion with whom to converse) would be a dream-come-true. On the other, you start appearing as a paranoid-schizophrenic to everyone else while your little invisible friend can inflict real-world consequences if you don't play nice.

Frankly, anyone who can't be bothered to lock a door before having sex, real or imagined, to prevent people from walking in on them , needs to be locked up for the safety of the public at large. (The scene where Starbuck walks into his lab and catches him , um, well if you saw the episode you know what she caught him doing, was totally disgusting!)

It think that episode was an attempt at 'a humorous' one, but I don't think it lives up to Babylon 5 in that respect. Some of the scenes between Mollari and G'Kar (two great actors for their respective parts) were some of the best Sci-Fi that I've ever seen - pure wit, deep characters, and a joy to watch (rare indeed).