I often wondered why Victoria 4 would not work with Poser’s External Binary Morphs option. I like the hard drive space savings External Binary Morphs provide. I really did not like that DAZ told me to turn off External Binary Morphs. But, no one could tell me the reason why Victoria 4 was incompatible with External Binary Morphs. So, I went looking for myself, and found the answer in the CR2 file.

Starting with Victoria 4.1, DAZ set the numbDeltas to 1 on some of the empty morph channels (the official DAZ Vic4 morphs). See the left side of the image shown.  The numbDeltas is the number of indexes that the morph contains. Normally, it would match the number of indexes of body part. However, an empty morph channel can have a numbDeltas set to 0 and Poser does not have a problem. See right side of the image shown.

To test this theory, I saved a blank Victoria 4.2 with External Binary Morphs checked on. When I opened the poser file, Poser locked up as expected. Then I opened the file in a text editor and did a find and replace to set “numbDeltas 1” to “numbDeltas 0”. I then opened edited file in Poser and it opened CORRECTLY. I was able to inject morphs, save the file, and reopen it several times.

My guess is Poser’s External Binary Morph option wants that number to match the actual morph indexes and since 1 does not match a blank morph, Poser locks up when attempting to open Victoria 4. I do not why DAZ setup Victoria 4 this way. It could have something to do with their Extensible Parameters (ExP) technology.

I do not fully know what happens to Victoria 4 when the numbDeltas are set 0. So, I claim no responsibility if it breaks something. I do ask people to try this out and confirm my results and to completely test Victoria 4 so we know what is going on. I am hoping that someone with more knowledge of Python than I could create a script file that set the numbDeltas automatically.

Willdial

External binary morphs causes a lot of problems in other applications too (Vue being one) I've never seen the point in it myself but YMMV

@willdial,

An excellent piece of detective work, and a valuable addition to our understanding of how Poser works!