Hallo all!

Potentially newb question alert here.

 I plan to create some animations to sell commercially. 

I'll use my current situation as an example for my question.. I have Aiko 3, the Morphs and Maps pack from DAZ3D, Breast Natural Gravity Morphs, and Aiko-X Body morph expansion packs.

Say I created an animation that used some of those morphs. If I then saved this animation to the library as a pose.. and then sold it commercially, would the person who bought it have to have those two morph products listed above installed on their machine in order to see the morphs at work in the animation?

 What if I created a custom morph by using ZBrush and loading the .obj file? Would they be able to see that morph at work in the pose file? Or would they have to have the .obj file that I created in order to see the morph and use it in their own animations?

Any and all information would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Yes to both.  In order for the animated pose (PZ2) to do exactly what you
originally put into it, the customer would have to have all the morphs that are used.
The PZ2 is nothing more than a list of dial settings for each frame, and if the
particular dial isn't on the figure, nothing will happen at that point.

(Poser will probably give a warning message like "This pose contains information
not present in the figure.")

Practically, I think you'd do better to make your own morphs and package them
with the pose, unless you could determine that nearly all Aiko owners have
the other morphs......

 Interesting..

 I'm guessing I'd have to include the .obj's I used to create my custom morphs in the animation package? Would this violate any copyrights, since I'm sort of distributing part of the mesh?

 Most people have the Morphs and Maps packs for the DAZ characters they have... right? O_O

Typically the custom morphs would be packaged as "injectable" sets of deltas.
Including the OBJ files would definitely violate copyright or EULAs.

If you're pretty sure most users already have the needed morphs, then you'd
be better off just using those, and specifying VERY LOUDLY in your advertisements
that those packages are needed.  :)

Anything that would involve distribution of the original mesh for sale is in violation, yes.  Now you are assuming that anyone owning Aiko 3 would also have the Morph and Maps Pack.  That, in it self, is a rather large assumption and would be entirely wrong.  Many newbies may not have discovered the morphing potentials with the addition of expansion packs and would probably not own such content.  Then again, many users may gravitate to Aiko 4 and not bother using the older version.  You'll have to get a feel for the general preference of models these days.

 Injectable deltas would not be in violation then? I don't know how to do this but I'll definitely do some researching. 

Are any changes I do to the mesh in Zbrush on the ORIGINAL DAZ figure [Without Morphs pack] able to be transferred into these deltas and packaged for the user buying the animation.. and then used without by the customer without the morphs and maps pack?

Yes injecting deltas if they are from pre existing commercial morphs would still be in violation of copyrights.

Daz for instance sells morph packages, and they own the copyrights to all the morphs.

Best advice: if you didn't make it, don't include it in a commercial package, because someone WILL find out eventually, and once you get blackballed in the poser community, people will remember forEVER.

And once someone uncovers one copyright violation, you KNOW people will go through everything else you made with a fine toothed comb.

Hmm.. interesting info! I ask something different and find out all this, heh.

What about my second question? ("Are any changes I do to the mesh in Zbrush on the ORIGINAL DAZ figure [Without Morphs pack] able to be transferred into these deltas and packaged for the user buying the animation.. and then used without by the customer without the morphs and maps pack?")

Is that how Netherworks (author of Aiko-x-2 Body morph expansion) made their morphs, [or similar to Zbrush method], and are able to sell them commercially?

Sorry for all these questions.. if anyone has a link to a forum post or FAQ where I can find most of this out.. that'd be much appreciated.

Thanks.

You may make and distribute any morphs you make from the base figure.  The deltas that are created when you make a Poser morph are what you need to package. There are a number of utilities that make it easier but it can be done manually in a text editor. Look at DAZ store for Injection Magic (and a few others)  The deltas are the vector for each vertex in the mesh that specifiesthe move to its new position, they dont let you recreate the mesh. 

As long as you dont distribute anything you did not create you are OK.

And actually you can redistribute delta changes if you use rtencoder, which requires an original morph product file as a "key" file to extract. (Without the original products, the archive will not extract.)

Many customers dislike that however.

Hi
I sell animated pose files in the market place here and My advice is just DONT  sell  animated pose sets
that include custom morphs period!!!
when you save animated pose the save dialog asks you if you want to include morphs.
if you say "YES" it will include  ALL morphs body and FACE.
nothing will anger a customer faster than to spend  hours dial turning a custom face  just to have it overridden when your pose file reverts it to the default face..
JMHO.

cheers.

what are you really trying to sell?

The animation itself - or  your custom figure as an animated figure?

I, for one, would not buy someone elses custom figure,  but I would buy animations.

I would suggest you create the animation with your morphs applied to your figure,  then remove the morphs and try the animation and see if it still flies.( arms not passing through hips, or whatever, etc)

If it still works,  you can sell it ,claiming that it also works  on base Aiko, or base V or whatever,  but package it as your custom morphed figure's animation.

I would only spend $ for animation to unmorphed figures. I want to make my own morphs  but i have no time to make animations