I'ven been told so far to avoid the option "Use external binary morph target" in P7 and PPro because it tends to give a lot of headaches, but I've read that it reduces figure size (cr2) and load/save times, and that I could for example, load every INJ morph on a figure and not worry about overgrown cr2s.

I've activated this option to give it a try myself, but I was wondering what are your thoughts/experiences with this.

Thanks.

It seems to cause trouble with scene files pz3. I have no idea why, just that people who use it find sometimes that the scene wont load.

It may save a little time because the morph data is compressed rather than in a fairly big text file but I have doubts as to how much real time is saved. Also to be fair the scene files are much smaller but you have the external morph files as well.

By all means give it a try, but I would save any important scenes both ways.  Using windows compressed folders or using posers compressed files will save lots of disk space compared to uncompressed scene or figure cr2 files .

The storage of the floating point values natively (in 4-byte format) conserves much more file space than in ASCII format (which can be anywhere from 1-byte to 10-or-20 bytes per value).  But with external binary morphs (.pmd) you do run that risk of scene corruption.  I'd opt for the text method (disable the external binary morph preference) which takes a bit more disk space but is 99% more reliable.  The speed difference is negligible on load.

The main reason for those people that need to avoid using it is some figures do not like External Binary Morphs. V4 is one that some people have reported having issues with the Scene (or Poser itself) when using external Binary Morphs. Turning this off resolved the issue. If you do not use V4 and maybe M4, then it should not be an issue. I have not heard of too many reports lately so the issue may not be present with V4.2 and later.

Binary Morphs is an "All or Nothing" decision. If you use partly embedded morphs and partly external morphs, it's rather likely that you will get in trouble sooner or later. Unfortunately, there's a new bug in Poser 7 SR3 which causes PMD files to be created for embedded morphs but not used by scenes, so it becomes pointless, if there are still files with embedded morphs.

I converted my complete Runtimes (i.e. all and every figure and prop with morphs) to use external binary morphs, and my experience is very well. I never had any problems loading saved scenes. The speed difference is enormous, a V3 with hundreds of embedded morphs can take up to a minute to load on my system, a V3 with the same morphs in a PMD takes a few seconds (the same time as the blank V3). And I no longer have to care about morph injections, I only use figures with all morphs already injected. Binary morphs are not loaded into RAM and only accessed if they are used, while embedded morphs have to be loaded and saved each time, also with the scene.

If you want to benefit from binary morphs, you need an external tool to extract all embedded morphs to PMD for all files. It also requires some manual preparation for figures with morph injections like V3 and V4.

Thanks for the feedback, its most welcome.

Dimension3D:
It's one of your tools for working with BInary Morphs and its description that got me thinking about this, I only work with V3 so I might give this a try using your app.

Oh and does it work with Morphing Clothes? Its the best utility for poser I ever tried, can't live without it now, since you're here, Thanks! :P

It seems I'm one of the few people really using binary morphs :)

Morphing Clothes is fully compatible with binary morphs, it can read and write morphs from and to PMD files.

If you use software other than Poser then binary morphs can cause problems sometimes.  Vue doesn't like them very much for e.g. 

What utilities or scripts exist that can convert files in mass to external morphs? Or from external to internal? Or both?
I prefer internal morphs, but quite a few products come with external, which messes up my attempts to rename and reorganize assets.

I just tried loading a V4 and saving with internal morphs and then with external morphs and both had the same size cr2 but the latter also had a .pmd associated. What is going on there?

Leather-Guy: The only software I know to mass-convert embedded morphs to binary morphs and back is my Binary Morph Converter. For single files, Poser File Editor can be used as well.

Momodot: That's a new bug in Poser 7 SR3, the CR2 still contains the embedded morphs (deltas). Try Poser 6 or Poser 7 SR2 if you still have it. With Poser 7 SR3, you can't load figures with embedded morphs and then save them as CR2 or PZ3 files that really use binary morphs, even if a PMD file is created.

Quote - Leather-Guy: The only software I know to mass-convert embedded morphs to binary morphs and back is my Binary Morph Converter. For single files, Poser File Editor can be used as well. 

I thought I had pretty much all the D3D Utilities, but I somehow missed this one. 
. . . I'll have to try to budget this one next!
;-]

Wasn't it concluded at some point that the trouble with binary morphs and some figures was the use of a blank morph target (sans deltas) as a pseudo-valueParm dial, to facilitate saving the valueParms to a pose?  Is the problem with binary morphs that they don't like empty morph target listings?

I'm wondering how binary morph storage handles inj/rem.  If you use rem to strip all of the deltas from a morph, does that strip the deltas from the stored binary morph, or prevent it from being loaded, or what?

I would assume that using a rem pose to remove deltas would simply not save that morph when saving a scene. My understanding was that the binary morphs are saved or loaded with a scene file or cr2.  It seemed from forum comments that V4 had particular problems with it but it had never been very robust even with V3 .

Funny how its the women figures that get mentioned most often. Mike must feel unloved

According to my experience, pseudo-morphs without deltas are not really a problem. Sometimes, they are not included in the PMD, sometimes they are but with no deltas. They can be loaded with the CR2 or PZ3 in both cases.

REM poses don't remove the morphs (except binary REM poses), they just hide the morphs and reset the deltas to make no change (i.e. no deltas). Hence they are handled the same way as unused morph injections and morphs used as controllers.

Quote - Leather-Guy: The only software I know to mass-convert embedded morphs to binary morphs and back is my Binary Morph Converter. For single files, Poser File Editor can be used as well.

D3D - Hi

I've purchased quite a few of your utilities.

I want to merge all the PMD files in my Poser folders into the characters, hairs, etc. that they go with so I can do away with the PMDs - I've turned off the option to use external binary morphs in Poser, but there are a lot of assets that come with PMD's, including content that comes with Poser, and they complicate my attempts to reorganize my Poser libraries.

I posted a question on how to eliminate PMDs in the Poser forum at Renderosity some time ago.  You posted that Binary Morph Converter would do the job.

I was able to save up and buy it at Renderosity a few weeks ago, and today I was finally able to install it.

The manual doesn't describe how to merge PMDs in any specific way - and the interface isn't intuitive to me.

I thought I had it figured out, but everytime I try and run it It scans 140-155 files or so, and then crashes, so I must be doing something wrong.

How do I use it to merge all the PMD files into their CR2's, HR2's, etc, so all the PMD's can be done away with? 

I'm afraid I need step-by-step instructions, as the manual isn't doing it for me.

I'm on XP/SP2 - Poser 8/SP1
Thanks

To get rid of PMDs and store all morphs directly in the figure and prop files, use the following settings in Binary Morph Converter:

1. Under "Tasks" / "Import Morphs", select "Resolve binary morphs".
2. Under "Options" / "Source File", I would recommend "Keep us backup", so you can revert to the original file in case of problems.
3. Under "Options" / "Morphs", only "Don't fail if binary morphs are not in PMD" affects this task. I would not check it, so you get an error message if the PMD file does not contain all morphs.

Use this setting on the files you want to convert.

If the application crashes, have a look in the log file (BinMorph.log) to see for which file this problem occurs (be sure "write to log file" is enabled in the options). Most likely, there is something unusual with this file or the associated PMD that causes the crash. If the problem is always for the same file, maybe you can send me that file by e-mail so I can have a closer look.

I use binary morphs all the time...they work great!

Kuroyume's free Morph Exchange will convert some PMDs to internal morphs.

"MorphExchange does not process the new Poser 6 "injectPMDFileMorphs" and "removePMDFileMorphs" directives contained within Poser files. It only processes Poser scene files with matching PMD files and Library files with "useBinaryMorph" directives and valid PMD files referenced within using the new "morphBinaryFile" directive."

Within those limits, it's worked perfectly on all the files I've tried.

http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/products_poser_freebies.html