It has arrived: V4.2!
I have just downloaded and about to install (about 90% the way in to brininging out a massive pack for 4.1... {sigh}.

Now I have to test everything all over again.

So I thought a thread was needed.
Let us all know how you got on and your issues and maybe we can work it out quicker together.

mol

Okay, lets start with something positive: Poser7 morphtool can be used on V4 without crashing, and it works! so that's one issue less.

I just loaded V4.2 and renamed all the 4.1 figure files in my poser 7 directory. Since my product (to be) calls up the V4 cr, this should? let me know if my stuff still works.

It seems to so far. The new 4.2 is loading in place of the old 4.1.

More tests to do, but so far - so good. Textures, morphs etc, yet t work through.
12/02/08 2.30 am GMT

I have to check a previous product. I will do this first.

mol

The installer won't let you install V4 into an external runtime. 

Is there any reason for this, that moving the !DAZ folder to the main runtime won't fix?

I installed V4 into the main P7 runtime (since I didn't have any choice).  Then I moved all the files to my external V4 runtime, and it seems to be working fine.  Is there any reason this won't work?

First of all I'm still wondering why they felt the need to upgrade V.4 again which I'm guessing because of the support she has.  I think DAZ ought to upgrade M3, David and the MIL Kids but they don't.  I received V4.2 base and when installing it, it says it can't read the INI file so it stops the install.  I recently formatted so does that mean I have to re-install the entire V.4 to the C drive?  TIA.

Well, I am pleased to say my stuff works okay in poser, both existing and new stuff about to be launched. Although, when I go into the renderoisty control room to update the existing products to confirm they are fit for V4.2, I am unable to make amendments. Different issue, I know, but annoying!

mol

Hey bopperthijs

I am 57... and I try not to be Grumpy.. but I feel the need to and resist :)

Cynism is there in me, and for good reason. Have we not seen it all?
I love Holland and go there a lot.
Keep in contact.

mol

Quote - First of all I'm still wondering why they felt the need to upgrade V.4 again which I'm guessing because of the support she has.  I think DAZ ought to upgrade M3, David and the MIL Kids but they don't.  I received V4.2 base and when installing it, it says it can't read the INI file so it stops the install.  I recently formatted so does that mean I have to re-install the entire V.4 to the C drive?  TIA.

The reason for the upgrade to V4 has mostly to do with the future soon to be Aiko4 and the necessary new file structure that V4.2 has. So, installing V4.2 into external runtimes may work...for now, but once Aiko4 comes out and you try to install it, her files won't work and you'll get all sorts of errors.

I'll throw mine in, then probably instantly find my mistake, but I can get everything to work but the male morph.

Crappity.

I just found some problems in my new product and it seems V4.2 too.
I load v4.2 and when I enter (Poser 7) the Morph edit tool and try to morph the figure: poser crashes out to nothing.

The only + thing is that it unloads poser quicker than anything I have in Windows :)   {sigh!).

I will look again in the morning. 5.00 a.m. here. What a bummer.
Anyone else?

Something is not right!?

mol

Which files are required to be downloaded here?  Daz seems to have reset ALL of my downloads for everything.  Since I have the V4 Pro Bundle, there are tons of extras probably not required (hairs, clothes, shoes, textures).  Can't tell though.

I'm still confused here.  In order to install the udpate, V4.1 MUST be installed in the target location first?
Whadda mess...

Quote- "For best results, we recommend that you uninstall any other versions of Victoria 4 from your system completely, including any previous versions of the Victoria 4.x Muscle Morphs, Morphs++, and Creature Creator Morphs products and THEN install Victoria 4.2 and her add-ons."

Uh  oh.

I never install the uninstall feature. This is going to take awhile.

Backed up all my 4.1 files and loaded up all the 4.2s from the free downloads offered by DAZ. No problems so far. She still has toes like hot dogs, but hey, so far everything works.

Apparently  that was only  if you owned the creature morphs.

Same here. ;)  That's because I don't intend on ever uninstalling V4 or V4.1 (need them for customer support, gaddangit!, Daz).  That's going to be difficult to do here.

Okay, so I see only these are required:

• Victoria 4 Base
• Victoria 4 Morphs++
• Victoria 4 Muscle Morphs
• Victoria 4 Creature Creator Morphs

And, these are all that I downloaded. ;)

Still a mess... ;D

Attached Link: Victoria 4.2 - Q&A - What's new and how to install, etc

Now the installer doesn't want to put things where I want them and I have to manually type in the directory, but that didn't do any good because it wouldn't do it to my designated directory. I don't want to overwrite anything.  It wants to put them in a  Curious Labs  folder.  I don't have one anymore.

Like I said. This is going to take awhile.

Quote- "I'll throw mine in, then probably instantly find my mistake, but I can get everything to work but the male morph."

I'm in the same boat. Tomorrow's another day. I'll see if I can get this da burn new fangled thing to work. I can't say as I like the new way of doing things at all.

Is the male morph supposed not to work? Otherwise I will wait until everything works....

I haven't decided yet if I'll install it, my personal view is that going back to having to inject the morphs is a poor idea, I much prefer having them already there like in 4.1 so all I have to do is turn the dial, why go back to having injects, anyone know? Seems  a strange decision to me!!
I'll wait to install until I need to!!

I'm afraid that V4, in its verious iterations, has eroded my confidence in DAZ as a creator of figures. They just don't seem able to ecplain things. Why this huge change to the morph system? Why installer filenames that don't get altered to reflect the changes? Why do the inanely limited readme files still refer to earlier versions of V4? We saw all this when they revamped the She-Freak figure from a seperate mesh to a set of injectable morphs. There's advantages to both, but they didn't tell you about the risk of overwriting the old model. And I'm not all that confident about their support for Poser. If you aren't set up to maximise Studio compatibility (things such as no extended runtimes) you're going to get bitten. You install for Poser, and get materials settings little better than for P4. And then I look at all the V3 stuff I have, and all the other unimesh figures, and my accumulated experience. and it becoems so hard to be enthusiastic about V4--one figure, with a few male morphs, compared to all the unimesh figures and textures and clothing. Just what is special about V4?

It appears to me(don't hold me to it because I'm just figuring it all out) that they have changed some things around with the morph dials. I think maybe I was just looking in the wrong place. I thought it wasn't loading them, but now I think it is.

The only thing I don't like is having to load it into my main Poser 7 directory, but I guess it's the only place V4.2 works right because it wouldn't let me load it in just any runtime folder that I had created.

I loaded it in my Poser 7 runtime. Then tried to use V4.2 in Poser 6 with the Poser 7 runtime and it locked Poser 6. Not a big plus in my book, but then it's still early. I'll be looking for the fixes and go around's for sure.

dogor, I installed V4.2 into an external Runtime without a hitch. I then did what one does with external runtimes, and just copy and pasted the deltas into the Main Poser Runtime.

Unlike the earlier V4 installs, I wasn't forced to install into the main Poser 7 Runtime.

V4.2 runs fine for me. And she/he now has some great legs, unlike the previous versions :)

-- Jeff

Quote - I haven't decided yet if I'll install it, my personal view is that going back to having to inject the morphs is a poor idea, I much prefer having them already there like in 4.1 so all I have to do is turn the dial, why go back to having injects, anyone know? Seems  a strange decision to me!!
I'll wait to install until I need to!!

Apparantly, people asked for it, according to the DAZ forum posts from the techies.

Some folks resist change, even if it's generational. The majority of current DAZ users musn't have used the original Mi figures that had the morphs embedded. Users are complacement and seemed to be comfortable with the bloat INJ files create. I like using the original Mil folk, as well as Apollo, who also has all morphs embedded. I find it easier than INJ. And the morphs are deletable just the same using svdl's script.

But, I assume, the transition for one generation to the next is diffucult, and so they went back to V3's bloat.

Just INJ and then save the modified .cr2 into your runtime and you'll be all set. That's what I plan on doing.

-- Jeff

Just to clarify some things here with respect to morph dials and injection:

1. Morph dials (targetGeom channels) and morph deltas must exist in the CR2 to morph the figure.

2. In V4.0 and earlier Millenium figures, this was accomplished by a static set of morph dials in two parts - user and private - into which you "INJected" the morph deltas.  Note: Except for Aiko3/Hiro3 where the morph dials and deltas were completely included in the CR2.

3. In V4.1, Daz decided to use a new method (EXP) wherein the static morph dial sets were replaced by scripts that added the required morph dials to the CR2 during package installation (not the morph deltas!).  When you install V4.1, you basically get the private morph dials automatically inserted into the CR2.

4. The biggie: there is no difference in morph injection between the two methods (theoretically).  One must separate the 'morph dial' EXP tech from the morph deltas and unhiding process of INJ tech.

Unless Daz has changed the tech again (which I haven't heard about), V4.2 is using the same EXP tech that V4.1 employed.  This involves the scripted creation of morph dials to support further injection of the morph deltas.  This does not add much improvement in file size - except that instead of a voluminous static dial set (V4.0), you now have a more 'in-demand' dynamic dial set (V4.1+) added during installation only.  Empty dials, though, don't consume much space in the file.  The consumer of space in the file are the morph deltas (Injection tech).

In plane terms, you still need to INJect the morph deltas for the morph dials to, well, morph.  The deltas aren't added - just like they weren't added in level-3 Millenium figures or V4.0/4.1.  V4.1/4.2 do change the paradigm on the idea of the morph dials themselves - they are no longer a static commodity (which all products must use to an extent) but one that can be added to on a product basis.

Someone correct me if this is incorrect.

INJ morphs were always a bit picky: I think the reasons are buried in how Poser handles file references. So I keep a full copy of the !DAZ folder, with all the INJ system files, in my main runtime and the externals which contain DAZ figures. Maybe this would work.

Most of the pickiness is in where you install and keep the parts.  The readScripts are all relative references which are seemingly made to the main Runtime (of the Poser install) - which usually means that the !DAZ folder must be in the main Runtime no matter in which Runtimes the other files reside.

The problem with EXP tech is that now you have this extra censorship on where you put the other files since it seems to expect the CR2 to reside in the main Runtime (so that is can be updated with new morph dials).  Thinking about this, maybe the problem resides in the install process making assumptions not about where the CR2 is to be updated but in some default process on how to make readScript references (?).  I don't know - haven't examined this tech in enough depth to understand the limitations.

Of course, much of this trouble with directory locations would have been avoided if they had at least built in SOME control over how the 'updater' script runs, like a simple dialog box, a prompt during execution, or even an ini file, but nooooooo.

I just put an X to the name of my old V4 folders and installed the new V4.2.

These new installers are crap, they don't have a browser. So you have to type your path in or do what I did. I ran the developer .exe and used it's browser to find the path and then copied it. Quit the install and then ran the V4.2 .exe and pasted the proper path. installed fine then and all the other new .exe used the same path.

Unfortunatly your screwed if you want a different path.

Other than that, it all seems to work fine. The morph brush issue is fixed. The male morphs work , though I don't have much use for them. The transform dials are still hidden, to bad, I had hoped they would have fixed that.

pjz99, Agreed 100% fully wholeheartedly. :)

I'll need more info on how V4.2 works (or doesn't) with iPP.  I've already one crash notification with this figure on Windows XP Pro x64 (stack overflow (?)).

I've had the new v4.2 in my runtime for a number of hours now and see no advantage to it at all. In fact, I still have issues with fingers that don't bend and other minor annoyances that won't get fixed untill i go into my alternate runtime and delete the alternate V4.1 I have there. The pain in the butt is not at all worth the hassle this lemon seems to be causing.

Holy crap! You'd think they'd taken one of her legs away, listening to all the whingeing and complaining in this thread.

What the f*ck is wrong with you people? It's the same model, it just handles morphs a tiny bit differently (better in my opinion). And you get a decent male morph, for $0.00.

Can anyone point to something about V4.2 that is actually worse than V4.1?

You want to know why people are whingeing and complaining?
Have a look at the 27 pages of "whingeing and complaining" HERE

I have her on my XP 64 bit side and working perfect so far. No crashes, all morphs inject and work including all the creature and muscle morphs.

OK, probably the dumb question of the day, but why would you want male morphs? Why not just use a male figure?

Good point. I already have Apollo, David, M3, M2, and M sitting in my runtime, I don't care about yet another one. V 4.2 is really nothing special. I found V 4.1 worked just fine.

FarawayPictures: because Daz neglected to make a David/Hiro/Michael/Luke/Matt 4? ;D

cspear: This is a mess.  1. When I went to My Account and Available Downloads, ALL OF MY PURCHASES (EVER) were (reset) there.  It took forever to distinguish the actual files to be downloaded.  2. Installing V4.2 means overwriting V4.0/4.1 which is not in my interest.  I need each figure to be available for customer support (yes, even V4.0.1.a.yesterday's udpate).  The recommended solution - install on another system/drive.  Yikes!  I can't do THIS on my Mac system (as it only has one drive!).  This is bordering on pathetic.

Sorry.  The entire situation is complex (depending upon Poser this or that, D|S this or that, existing V4.x installs, V4.x third-party installs, OS, system, configuration, main or external Runtime, ...).  Daz needs to stop forcing conformity to unreaslistic parameters.   Look, I'm not whining.  My business depends upon having a wide variety of configurations available for resolution.  The 'you must update V4.1 completely to V4.2' methodology doesn't provide much of a workaround for this without going atomistic and complicated.  At this time, that just adds more complication to the complication of my complicated complication complicating my complicated situation.  Sorry if you can't understand that... ;)

Actually, there were code problems in 4.1, like crashing Poser if you used the morph brush on her. 4.2 it's fixed.

The only thing I can find to complain about are the hidden dials.

In my interPoser Pro plugin, I have options to show hidden dials.  Why Poser hasn't implemented ways to show them or create individual master-slave connections is beyond me.  Instead, one has to edit the file or run a Python script for a built-in feature.  Think about it - master-slave connections can only be done (atomically) by editing the file.  You can create FBMs within Poser, but not general master-slave connnections.  So weird.  Magical Mystery Tour.  Need LSD! ;P

The idea of 'hidden dials' is 'hands off' - don't touch these.  But, as you have noted, Daz is doing this in a sort of roundabout way - don't touch these, use these instead, bad bad boy.  'Controlling' comes to mind...

That and Daz made sue that DS can unhide them. I also think the hiden dials has a lot to do with the lazy. There were a lot of complaints about the dials and they were not needed or used. This being more the Daz fans that just buy and buy and want it all made for them and work with one click instead of trying things out for themselves.

But then, it's only a hassle to those of us that like creating our own ideas. So we hack the file like the true poser users we are or thank those that can write the scripts for us.

Unfortunately, there is not much difference between hidden dials and not - the same memory is still consumed, for instance.  Except maybe for the sparsity of the dial parameter interface - but even then, with dial groups, an apparent sparsity can be accomplished by group organization alone.  So the real effort is in restricting control - that is, subsuming control to the default interface provided.

I'm not convinced there is a purpose beyond this (control).  One can 'hide' infrequently used dials in an infrequently accessed dial group for so-called 'experts' without resorting to draconian measures (file hacking).

FWIW, over at the DAZ forums, some people are getting around the BitRock installer by copying their Poser.exe to the runtime they want to install to. 

Quote - FWIW, over at the DAZ forums, some people are getting around the BitRock installer by copying their Poser.exe to the runtime they want to install to. 

I've just done a full install of V4.2 and 4.2 morphs using this method, with absolutely no problems.

When I've finished testing, I'll run all the assets (CR2s and injection PZ2s, textures and geoms) through Hogsoft's Correct Reference Pro using my standard practice of having Full Path References (rather than relative). This should mean that I can set up a separate Runtime for all my new V4.2 stuff and retain V4 and V4.1 in their current locations.

I am not going to try to analyse what the V4.2 initialiser does. I'm holding off on installing it until I get a better explanation of just what the new features are. Earlier versions put a shortcut on the desktop which calls a .bat file which calls the executable with two command-line options, neither of which seems to be a directory. The first one looks to be the name of the subfolder ("Victoria 4") under "!DAZ" in which the script/pose files are put. The second is "V4". which doesn't seem to have an obvious significance in filenames or folder names. I surmise that there must be some hardwired pathnames buried in the program, relative to the !DAZ directory. The actual initialiser program runs in the same window as the batch file, and adding "pause" to the file lets you read the output reporting the files which are written. It looks very low tech, not that there is anything wrong with that. The V4.2 version, with the new approach to morphs, must be doing some different stuff. But what the initialiser is doing may not be horribly complicated. And how does it find the V4 CR2 What if I take a V4-with-some-morphs and save as a character, later buy a set of new V4 morphs, and want to use a couple with that character? I have some idea about how V3 works. I don't have the same confidence in how V4 works.

Actually, if I load a character I made from V4.1 which has a set of morphs on the hip, and try the morph brush on her, but now 4.2, I get a problem. If I try to morph the head (of my character), Poser crashes and disappears quicker than I can blink. Morphing anywhere else is fine.

A strange one.

Anyway, I guess I can use this to shut down poser in the future as it is quicker than trying to 'offically' close the program. (Poser 7).

mol

Quote - Actually, there were code problems in 4.1, like crashing Poser if you used the morph brush on her. 4.2 it's fixed.

The only thing I can find to complain about are the hidden dials.

Downloaded, installed, loaded into Poser, INJ all morphs.  Works like a charm.  Absolutely no problems at all.

Oh, Poser 6 SR3.

Quote - Holy crap! You'd think they'd taken one of her legs away, listening to all the whingeing and complaining in this thread.

What the f*ck is wrong with you people? It's the same model, it just handles morphs a tiny bit differently (better in my opinion). And you get a decent male morph, for $0.00.

Can anyone point to something about V4.2 that is actually worse than V4.1?

Judging by the replies, the installer is options-free and thus screws up the delicate balance of V4.1 that users have, with little apparent benefit.

Judging by the replies, that is.

The installer isn't options free.  There's an option to browse to whatever folder you want, same as in the past.

Quote - The installer isn't options free.  There's an option to browse to whatever folder you want, same as in the past.

Yes, it will let me browse to any folder I want, but insists that V4.2 can ONLY be installed to the folder where the Poser executable is.  Please, tell me how I get it to install to where I want it because I haven't been able to.

No Problems, installed in Poser 7 fine. Male morphs work and so does morph tool.
On Daz account besure and download newest exp, file. I had two of everything.

Just copy your Poser.exe to the folder above where you want the installation.

Worked for me! :biggrin:

Klutz