I'm going to have to start the transferring of morphs to the mask all over again(had a power outage in our apartment building and all work was gone:( ). I was curious about if giving masks(made from M3 head)for M3 that have a lot of his morphs transferred to it is ok to do and that it won't infringe on any type of law from anyone(such as the creators of M3 or DAZ). I just want to cover my bases and if it isn't ok then I will save myself a lot of work and hassle of redoing it. Sorry if this isn't the correct forum for this question.

I think you have to do some kind of encoding to the file, known as RTE encoding, to ensure that only those with the original M3 and morphs packages can use your mask. Otherwise, you are giving away both a selection of Michael's mesh, and various morphs from the sold package - both of which would be against the DAZ EULA. I've never actually tried to create something from another character before and give it away after, though, so I have no idea if this IS actually the case, or how to go about doing it if I am correct. Hopefully, someone else with a little more knowledge than I will be able to weigh in and help. jonthecelt

If the mask geometry is made from M3's head, you'll have to encode it with M3. (RTE would be best, since there's an RTE encoder/decoder utility for both Windows and Mac). If you made the mask geometry yourself, in a modeling applications, there's no need to encode. The morphs do not change anything about the encoding need. If your mask is cut out from M3's head, the morph deltas are from M3 too. But it won't be possible to extract them to recreate M3's head morphs, since the mask only partially covers the head, the number of vertices is different, and so is the vertex order. It might be necessary to encode the mask with multiple source files; not only M3 but also his head morph .pz2 (the InjDeltas ones). And if you made the geometry yourself (and created the morphs using The Tailor or the cloth room), the morphs are yours and you are free to do with them as you like. The M3 morph deltas may be a catch. I'm not sure if DAZ allows using them. You'd best ask DAZ.

Thanks jonthecelt and svdl for your responses. I'll look into the RTE encoder. I'm even more confused though I used Poser 5 to export M3s head as obj them imported it into Anim8or and reworked it (removed areas around the eyes,ears,nose and mouth)to make the mask shape. I then used the shell tool to give the mask thickness. Last step was to reimport the head obj then scale the mask shape up so that it would cover the head properly. So I'm not sure if enough of a change has occured. I could just post them as is and let anyone who wants to add there own morphs. But will see what happens withRTE encoder first.

Message edited on: 03/29/2006 14:30

You used the M3 head mesh as a base, so you will have to use an encoder (either RTE or Objaction Mover, but the latter is PC only) to comply with the DAZ EULA. As for creating morphs, that's actually quite easy. Load Michael 3 and his head morphs, disable IK and set him in zero pose. Load the mask; it should cover his head perfectly. Switch to the cloth room, create a new simulation with 10 frames, clothify the mask and assign all mask vertices to the constrained group. Go to frame 10 and set one of Michael's head morphs to 1. Calculate the simulation. Stay in frame 10. Make sure you have the mask selected. Choose Object->Spawn Morph target and give the morph the appropriate name. Stay in frame 10. Set another of Michael's head morphs to 1 (and the previous one to zero). Recalculate the animation, and spawn another morph in the mask. Repeat until you have all the head morphs in the mask. A time-consuming business, The Tailor will be quicker, but it can be done in the cloth room.

Thanks svdl! I've added some morphs but I still need some hints, tips or whatever you've got on how to use RTE encoder.:) Also for some reason if I try to use Tailor 1.61 to transfer the morphs it will only transfer certain ones(such as HdAfrican2 and not HdAfrican) but when I use the cloth room method it will work with all. So I guess I will use the cloth room method for the morphs.