I just talked to a young lady in the legal department at Daz 3d whom if I remember correctly was called Debbie, About a consern dealing with a set of charectors I have been trying to release, and she told me something quite disturbing. There can not be any morph targets modifications based off of any of the morphs found in Victoria 2.0. To explain my self better, if I was to spawn a morph target using the Head Asian morph that comes with Victoria 2.0 at a setting of 0.200 and added another 10 morph targets at to create a unique face. The spawned morph target is still considered Illegal for sales or distribution (Free Stuff)purposes according to Daz 3D legal Department. So any modifications that have been made using any morphs from Victoria 2 count as copy right infringement if they have been placed in either the free stuff page, or the online market place. I would like to know if anyone from Daz can clarify or conferm this for me, or research it, because it really didn't make sence to me that such tight restrictions would be placed on such a versital charector. i even reread the FAQ on it at the Daz sight and couldn't find a 100% clear answer on it. If that is the case then I (and I suspect a few others) wasted a good amount of money on Victoria 2.0. -Gabe-

This was all covered when V2 was first released. There are methods to do what you are after. They involve using PZ2 files (pose files). Go back and read the forum posts. DAZ has a tutorial on their site. You want a single character morph? as before V2? no. You have a combination morph for everything but V2 morphs? and a PZ2 file to set the V2 morphs? -- and let each user then do their own combination morph using "Spawn"? - yes. This way - only those who own V2 to generate the character.

Yep .. that is kind of correct. They can be used as pose sets to my knowledge. That way only those people that have them can use them. At least to my knowledge.

Ya, search the past threads and it will explain as well. I personally don't feel that this means I wasted money on V2. To be allowed to spawn a single morph like before would mean that all of those out there that didn't buy V2 would get the added benefit of the extra morphs without purchasing it. I personally don't feel it is much more difficult to load one morph (spawned from all of the non-V2 morphs, and then use a pose file to add the V2 settings. So maybe it is one more step, but I personally don't think an extra click or to is anything to complain about.

I think DAZ has unrealistic expectations and an unenforceable edict. I think their legal department hasn't looked at the NASDAQ in about a year. The phrase used to be: "Whistling Dixie while counting your confederate money" ....

Huolong, A few combination morphs may slip thru, but if it is discovered, no stores will carry the item, no forums will allow it as free stuff, and whoever does it will probably need a new identity. I hope most of us are wise enough to know better than to soil one of our main wells.

IMO, it is a very, very silly restriction. It's not like someone is going to be able to restore the individual morph values in a figure based on one combined character morph! I will just bet they continue this line of thinking though in future products, which is very disturbing. -WTB

I need some clarification about the "morphs" you guyz are talking about. When I morph a figure (just P4 for now... no money for Vicky or Mike), I use the base object, like the head, then tug and pull at the verticies in another program until I get the head to look like I want it to look, then save that object. When I return to Poser, pull up my model and target the head, create a new morph button, then turn the dial to 1.000. Is this the same as the technique that troubles the legal department?

I dont see why people cant understand ...... Victoria 2 is not a new object , she is a character , she is a cr2 file, if you buy a character how could you expect to be able to send out the information that makes that character. why would daz allow distribution of vic2 morphs , if they did that they might as well not sale her.

People like myself don't understand because we don't really know what a CR2 or a PZ2 is, nor what it looks like, nor how to manipulate it. In my case, I'm limited to looking at an object that looks like a solid object on my screen. I've read posts where people talk about changing files in "notepad" and using those files to change the character, but I really do not understand what those files are nor how they change the object I see on my screen.

Basically it is like someone buying the Massive Mike character and then adding a morph and shipping him out to everyone else. You are basically giving him away for free or charging for someone else's work.

Well, far as I concerned, Supermodel Morph Vickie morphs aren't redistributable either. I don't have a legal department to back that up, but that is how I feel. The bottom line is, there are people who can't or will not model (like TygerCub does) that want to build a character based on other people's work. The character might be for sale, or it might be free, but that doesn't make any difference, you are still giving away something you don't own. I can certainly understand DAZ's position, they don't want the Vickie II morphs used by people who haven't bought that character. See the Morphworld thread above this, too, same problem.

Tygercub , please dont feel that i was addressing you with that statement , if you need help to understand certainly Im sure someone with more knowledge than me should give it to you. I didnt mean for that to sound so harsh, my apologies. Now as far as what all the files are and what you need to know about them , I wish I was articulate enough to put it all together for you , but I think I should leave it up to some one else :-) Or recommend you find as many tutorials as possible to help guide you.

No I dont understand your point , cause if you used the morph dials in victoria then doesnt that pass on work that daz did , and couldnt people extract setting from that to recreate the original morph? and if enough people decided to do this kind of character isnt it possible that a person could obtain enough of the vic2 morph information to come close to recreating the entire figure? And if they did , wouldnt that make it pointless to buy vic 2? and remember Im not very educated on the morph process so fill me in. :-)

TJ- The answer is no. You cannot extract the "Original" morphs at all. Any amount of dial spinning on the new morph target changes several areas of the face at once, plus gives increments of the changes made with magnets or in Max or whatever. Therefore, V2 remains THE thing to have for the original morphs. The argument that spawned character distribution ruins the need for V2 is without merit. -WTB

I cant understand that at all...you are using dazs work to make your file , you are using their morphs , if none of the informations is transferrable , how could they tell you used their settings to begin with ? Theyre only guessing that the information is included in the file that was sent to them ?

"You're using DAZ's Work to make your file..." Not truly accurate. YOu are using small fractions of DAZ's work to make your single character. The one final morph target that you reduce it all to ends up being your vision to reshape the face of Vicky ONE way. Your one morph target is only good for that purpose: to fulfill your vision. It is no good for any other purpose. You would not use my "Buffy" to try to change the nose, because you are also changing the eyes, the mouth, the chin, the temples, etc. Trying to use character morphs this way would be maddening. Therefore, V2 remains a much needed stand-alone. Get it? -WTB

Gabe ... With the example above it would be fine if you put it on a vicki 1 character since those come with the character .. it is only when you add the little bit of the asian 3 or whatever morph that you come into the problem unfortunately ...

At least I think so

Nope , I dont get it , cause I still cant understand , how can they tell if there work is or isnt included in the file that you try to redistribute? It would seem to me the only way to tell would be if your work transmiited enough of their work to be extracted from the file.

There must be something more to this than I'm understanding too. (Sigh) My brain hurts. Instead of using a PZ2 or CR2 file to make the morph target, why not just make an OBJ that can be targeted under "Properties" and spawns a dial? Or does that >contain< the CR2/PZ2?

Umm. This is going to sound really stupid, but can't you just subtract the morph values of the base from the final morph prior to distribution? I mean, take Vicky, turn the 'final morph' to 1.0 and then set heart to -1 and round to 1 (inverting the values of the base morph). Then export the result as 'distributable final morph' - what you have left is what is your own additions. You could add a note in the readme saying 'thumbnail image generated with heart set to 1 and round to -1' or somesuch.

It seems that Daz is concerned about the single obj as well as the cr2 angle. What they seem to be getting at is that if someone has a shred of one or more of their morph targets, that they are somehow going to benefit from the "essence" of Vicky 2 and her morphs without paying for her. Even an exported obj is going to have some bits of V2 morphs you see. None of which anyone can make useful outside of making the artist's character. -WTB

Jswing, in that one example, that would be fine. How about a character though that uses .013 of several v2 morphs? This would be too much to document. Yeah, then use a Pose file instead. "Is that so hard?" you can hear DAZ ask of you. Well...you know...it's not really asking that much. On the other hand, as a character creator, I must say that spawning a morph target during several creation stages makes the whole process easier and helps when you are taking several cr2s with different morphs (cause you can't fit them all on one Vicky) and running your morph through all of those to get it just right. By the time you're done, you might have 10% of your morph traceable to Vicky 2. And what makes it all silly is that nobody can use your morph to assemble a V2. So what's the point of the distinction??? -WTB

That is why the pose file is good. It is even smaller than the normal cr2 or whatever anyway S Much smaller.

Whew... long thread. Is it just me, or is everyone missing the point? Does DAZ care about people getting parts of Vicki 2 without paying for her, or that people are taking what makes their model so valuable and unique... Her morphs. If everyone takes her morphs and makes new characters then she would not be as special Right? Of Cours, any artist doesn't want someone copying their ideas, or makes competition. I know I don't want anyone making an elf using my character base and then selling it as their own. just my .02 as a new artist Ryoko

I was simply just trying for a change to look at it from a technical view so i could try to see what it is that everyone keeps bitching about ;-)

So true TJ. No matter what angle you look at it, i'm still lost as to what all the bitching is about! LOL Ryoko

And I guess my point was trying to understand the difference between a character and an object. If the Vicky model has the same number of verticies as the P4 woman, then I can understand the gripe. It takes loads of work to turn the P4 woman into something that looks like a real human being, and if a vicky morph can be used on a P4 woman, then there is no need to buy the vicky model. However, if the number of verticies is different, then the morphs will not work on a P4 model and the legal bitchin will be moot.

TygerCub, generally, a character is the Cr2 file, and the object is the mesh file that the Cr2 is based on. Vickie and P4 woman (posette) are different meshes. Vickie1, Vickie2, and VickieP4 are all the same mesh. Vickie2 has a lot more new morphs, which is what the upgrade consists of. That is why Daz3D doesn't allow Vickie2 Cr2 distribution, and why they don't want any combined morphs from Vickie2 distributed. Vickie P4 is the same mesh, "recut" to match the P4 woman so P4 woman clothes could be used, and still use Vickie texture maps.

Nope not a waist of money, Just don't expect to make money off her.

After reading all of this, I'm still a bit confused. I've just begun making morphs in Amorphium and I've got Victoria 2 P4 version set up to make morphs. I've only made a couple of morphs for her that I think are workable. I've made these morphs myself by reshaping her head with the tools in Amorphium. I tried out the morphs I made on V2P4 and they look nice. I tried them on Victoria 1 and Victora 2 and they don't work at all (the head explodes). It's due to the way you have to use the Compose utility to get the part into Amorphium in the first place. What I've made is an original morph and does not use any of DAZ's dials. I can use Morph Squish afterward for distribution. But does this above conversation mean that I can't distribute my morph? I made it myself in Amorphium, not by Spawning Morph in Poser.... Liz Pope Dreamspinner Inc.

I think those are fine as long as you squish em. Just like normal Liz ... If you wanted to use it on Vicki 2 character with other vicki 2 morphs you would simply have to include the squished obj that you made and a pose file. Much smaller than the actual cr2 anyay. If you just wanted the morph then that is cool too.

Ryoko: Whew... long thread. Yah shish!! Ok first A morph target is a modification of verticals based on the exact positioning of the Veticals from the original mesh. (Wow that sounds confusing) For instance if you import the p4 fem into 3DS max, while keeping the vetex scale set to 1.0 you get the head landing in exacly the same place with in the world space as it is in poser. If you move it a little it will defore the entire head. A morph target is the movement of specific Verticals in the mesh to change the shape of a particular part of the object.

Now with that said, Tj: when I omport a morph I have created in max, no matter what I did to it in poser, the morph is a compleete modification, and can not be changed back in part, but only in whole. in other wards the original dial and it's paramaters no longer have any value in the new morph. lets say I didn't move any verticals by hand and used only dials available in the V@ cr2 file, the only way to get the meshes original morphs, or get forinstance to get only the chin morph, you need to have all of the original morphs and set them to be the opisite number and value I used to make the original morph. Now when I modify it in another program like Max, I am first taking out the abilities to modify the meshes original dial properties, and two moving the verticals by hand, and thus taking the original properties of the original morph out.

(Sorry I have to keep making little text boxes, it will only alow me to upload small amount of text at a time for some reason.) But anyway, That is at least the old philosophy. But I still have it in my head the way Metacreations thought. Their philosofy was simple, if you buy somthigng from them, and use it or inprove upon it, then hay great, that will generate more interest. That was the way it always was from the begining. For instance I remember this forum at Ground Zero. The first day when it was The "Poser Forum Online" and had a total of 10 links. There wasn't much there, but over the years, all of us to one extent or another, contributed to the comunity by taking what someone did previously, and building upon that to make somthing new and better. Victoria ia acualy a comertial vertion of "EVE" (Evolution woman" that used to be available at travalers sight. and though people will argue that, if you look at the way that Eve" is cut up, it is the same way vickie is. This was done because people here at the forum were tiered of joints that didn't work naturaly, and took the P4 woman and change the way she moved to make it more natural. Zigote, or DAZ, (Dont remember if which released Vickie 1)liked the idea so much they took the consept and releaced a better figure with theose joint parameteres.

Continued, Hair is another example. Ikioto if I remember corectly, made the first trasmaped hair, solving the age old problem of poser helet hair. Now everyone including Daz uses this idea that he came up with. the idea has been improved over time from the original, but it was still spawned and tested here. This all goes to the same point. Everything here is here because we would take some idea that was released hear and build upon it ot create somthing more. that's where al of this came from. I also do understand that vickie 2 is a unique and figure and they don't want to release all of the stuff that makes her so good and versital to everyone who hasen't paid for her, but the thing that surpised me about vickie2 is that up until now morphs were used to add to the evolution of the product and inadvertantly the the comunity that patronise them. It does make sence, but is much diferent than things used to be.

Continued The entire reason for the statement and question I posted hereis simple. I have a serise of ten figures I have created that have sparked alot of interest through e-mail and here. Moat are Vickie 1, but a few are based vickie 2. And the only reason they have sparked interest is because they are all Based on the body shape and paramaters of "real" Human beeings that I worked with in my photography buesness. Theese real models agreed to model for me in neurtual postion so that I could in essence replicate them in 3D. They also agreed to have the 3D vertions of them released to the public when it was done. (I want to sell them, because I did have to pay the humans that modeled for the project.) This is only my hobby after all, and Hiering the models was expencive. Now the reason that I desided to used Victoria as a base insted of making my own mesh from scratch is that I wanted to release them to you guys, I can use them as my own mesh or Vickie based ones it makes very little diferance for my own purpases. but there are so many morphs outthere, and so mant things that people want to do with them, that it made sence to make it compleetly compatible with what everyone is using. Making new morphs for a figure when there are already 5 bazilion out there for another one that can be adapted just seemed like the right idea. It acualy created alot of extra work for me too. i have a program (And all of the hardwear)called 3D metrics that converts photos into meshes. It is fast and easy. I could have simply used that to make 3D models of the People I based them on and saved myself a lot of brain fry. But then who would benefit, and who whould take them to the next level? I have alway learned allot here, and have been here since the Poser dark ages. I figure I should at least give a bit back for al that has been shared and or given to me. Help or otherwise. By the way, sorry TJ, reading over everything I realise that it looks like this was directed to you, but I just got on a roll and it was ment for everyone. I hope my pathetic eplanation of morphs made atleast some sence. Ok all Disertation over. :^) -Gabe-

It's simple, folks. If I were to write a song based in large part on something by, say, Pearl Jam, and then try to distribute it, you can bet that PJ would be really POd and would, no doubt, take legal action. DAZ is simply doing the same thing: protecting their work. Just because you shove a few mesh points around does not make it a brand new character.

There are many people in this thread that are simply not "Getting it" or what the sides are about. I refer most strongly to atthisstage. A single morph target is not a character, as such. A single morph target comprised of bits and pieces of several morph targets of various sources some of which might be V2 morphs cannot I repeat CANNOT be used in any way to duplicate the V2 morphs from which they came. Therefore, there is NO POSSIBILITY of undermining the usefulness of V2 as a CHARACTER. To use your Pearl Jam analogy: I can make a song that uses Pearl Jam's drumbeat from a song, Maybe one part of Pearl Jam's bassline for the bridge, a bit of Stone Temple Pilot's Ideas from a song, and borrowing on lyrical THEME from something by Britney Spears. It's a whole new song, inspite of the fact that's it's a ripoff of many ideas. This is done every godblessed day in the music community. It's the entire 90's, for cryin out loud. If I were to export a V2 morph with a value of 1 and distribute that, that is pure piracy. If I export a combo of V2 Morph for Move L eye up at a value of .3 and standard vicky heart face at .666 and a jaager morph at a value of .1 along with some of my own magnet work at .8 there is no way anyone is going to be able to make a "Move L eye Up" morph out of that which would cheat DAZ out of V2 money. It's just ludicrous. It's their policy, so fine, end of story. But I'm here to tell you that the policy is daft. -WTB

You know, I work in the theatre as a set designer. I have my portfolio online, and on a couple of occasions, I've seen my work "appropriated" by design students for their work. "But I changed it a little, and that makes it okay!" is usually the defence, but NO, it does NOT make it okay. And for WTB to sit there and say, well, I'm changing this and I'm changing that and that somehow makes it okay overlooks the essential problem here: YOU'RE USING A BASE CHARACTER THAT IS CONTROLLED BY COPYRIGHT. If you want to issue a character of YOUR OWN DESIGN and attach a morph to that, go for it, and may it sell you many times over. But to whine that DAZ won't automatically give you secondary uses to THEIR work is, in my humble opinion, the height of arrogance. Yes, WTB, it's the 90s, and people are finally paying attention because of the internet and its wide spread abuse of copyright issues. If you can't bother to create something original, then don't get upset when people who HAVE come down on you a little bit. "It's the entire 90's", after all.

No, you're still not getting it. a single morph target is not Redistributing their base character. Their angle is that people are going to benefit from individual morph targets in spawned character morphs and will thus not buy V2. You don't get what I'm saying at all. On paper it is no different from STANDARD VICTORIA MORPHS that they have no problems with you and I distributing in a spawned morph target. I get their side, but they are being totally irrationally paranoid to make a distinction. -WTB

Hey there, it looks liek there are two misconceptions happening.... and I might be able to be constructive :) "It's a whole new song, inspite of the fact that's it's a ripoff of many ideas. This is done every godblessed day in the music community. It's the entire 90's, for cryin out loud." No, you can't. In fact, if you sampled a drum beat from a song and did not credit them they can and will sue you. Happens all the time. Now, let's seperate morph SETTINGS from morph TARGETS. I take Vicky 2. I play with the dials and come up with a combination of settings that are way cool. I >CAN< sell those settings. I can NOT protect them. If someone else independantly found the same settings then I am out of luck. I did NOT "create" them. If I download a new morph target (new geometry) and add it to Vicki, I get a new dial. If I set that to .5 and it looks great, I CAN sell the setting for that target as well. Now, we have a problem though. I need to distribute the SETTINGS (the numbers ont he dial) but NOT the geometry data for the file. My settings are only useful if they have purchased the Vicky character and it has to stay that way. This is complicated in V2. The morphs are products (the new dials) that COULD be used on V1. If I simply "create morph target" from my V2 dial settings then someone with V1 could use it without purchasing V2, because some of Daz's copyrighted geometry data is int he morph file. That's not legal. So I need to ship my settings as a "pose", not a morph. That way, they only work on V2, copyrights are all legal and everyone is happy. So when someone says that a someone "stole their morph" they do NOT mean the settings on the dials - they mean the actual geometry that those dials are altering. Whew ... did that make any sense?

Yep. But, it doesn't explain how the policy makes sense :) It's not a big deal. Rather, it's not a "deal" at all if V1 users have a few characters that were grown off V2. If anything, it's a walking advertisement for V2. Unless of course, credit is not given. That takes away from the ad factor.

I don't see how that would be much help to Zygote. If someone can simply build a nice V2 character, spawn a morph and sell it to the V1 folks - then many of them will simply not get V2. If the character is sold as pose files, then all is well for everyone :)

soulhuntre understands the issues! Yay! See, people still need V2 to get the morphs that are so very nice. Character morphs cannot replace the individual sculpture morphs that V2 has to offer :) Thanks for being bright :D I don't disagree with the pose thing either or your conclusions, I just hate to see the opposite view not represented. -WTB

Soulhuntre, Your point is completly right in every logical way, but read the below statement again and see what you think... "I still have it in my head the way Metacreations thought. Their philosofy was simple. If you buy somthing from them, and use it or improve upon it, then hay great, that will generate more interest..... all of us to one extent or another, contributed to the comunity by taking what someone did previously (The companies or us), and building upon that to make somthing new and beter. Victoria ia acualy a comertial vertion of "EVE", (Evolution woman) that used to be available at travalers sight. And though people will argue that, if you look at the way that Eve" is cut up, it is the same way vickie is.{Eve came first} This was done because people here at the forum were tiered of joints that didn't work naturaly, and took the P4 woman and change the way she moved to make it more natural. Zigote, or DAZ, (Dont remember if which released Vickie 1)liked the idea so much they took the consept and releaced a better figure with theose joint parameteres. (Being Vickie) End Re-Read -Gabe-

continued, The entire evolution of the product and it's meshes and morphs have to a great extent come from it's users, not the company. For instance, Vicki wouldn't even exsist if it wasn't for how libiral the polacies have always been. Travaler (If my memory serves) came up with the idea for the new joint and parameters, not Meta, Zigote, or Daz. The program and companies have done nothing but benefit to an insane (and Profitable) extent because of it. That is why, as I have learned, Daz has alowed people to release mashed, or 'Vertical only" .obj morphtargets from Vicki 2. They do seem to understand this. By the way, The way this all started was a question from a friend of mine Eric, who is a corprate lawyer. He was wondering how the maket place or free stuff page even exsisted, because it was copyright infringment from the get go. The conversation cased me to call Daz and findout what liabilities were involved with the new figure, but antway, according to Eric, if the mesh is copyrighted, and the figure is copyrighted as well, but there is no geometry involved, paramater changes (Like Morphs) are theory or consepts only. (Consepts can be protected too but it gets mesy and I couldnt understand a word of what he was trying to explane to me. "I sware he wasnt using real words.") Since the base figure is copyrighted though, the base should not be able to be modified in any way for public distrobution. This came off the top of his head, and he told me he would have to do a bit of reasearch to make sure he was corect. But... that is where Meta (which keeps getting bashed for some reason), Zigote, Curious Labs, and Daz, have all been so wonderful to us, in allowing it's patrons to have limited free reigh on the stuff they release, Don't ever think though, that there not reaping the benefits, or raking in the cash for it. It is simple and good buesness sence, and I do apreciate there allowing us theese liberties. -Gabe-

Gabe, are you saying that DAZ reversed their policy on distributing morph-squeezed spawned, combined morph target fragments from V2 morphs (No longer limiting us to Pz2 paramater files) or are you saying that they just can't legally do anything about it? -WTB

Well Here is the excerpt of the e-mail, se if you get the same thing from it. The geometry he is talking about was a misunderstanding. I thought you had to have it in there it if you were brikering through Daz's sight specificaly, but anyway, here it is. "I've looked over your character, and she does seem to be a nice character. However, there are a couple of problems with the way you want to distribute the character. First, you have included the complete blMilWom.obj - even though it is modified, it is still the complete Victoria geometry, and it is illegal to distribute geometry from or derived from any of our models. The Second problem is that you used the Victoria 2 cr2 file to create your character - it is also illegal to distribute the Victoria 2 cr2 in whole or part. You can visit the FAQ section of our site and read the section entitled "How do I legally create add-ons for Victoria 2" this explains the various ways that you can create characters for Victoria 2 which are legally distributable. To make your character distributable, you would need to make her with a Victoria 1 cr2 (not Victoria 2) and you would need to include the morphs for your character in the cr2, instead of distributing a new geometry (obj) file. Another option would be to save out a morph for each individual body part and use a utility like 'Morph Masher' to make the morphs into 'squished' morphs - a 'squished' morph is the only type of obj file that can be distributed legally." So yes I think so unless I am misunderstanding you can do it. -Gabe-