Hi everyone,
OK, here I go again wanting to try something new in Poser. I've often thought about it, but never tried it.... how would I go about making a morph? Specifically, I'd like to make a morph that changes the shape of the face for Daz's Freak. If I understand it right, he'll accept any morph that's made for Michael 3, but I haven't found what I'm looking for, so I thought to my self   "Self", I said, "Why not try to make it yourself? You can make it for M3, and apply it to him or the Freak."

Sounds good, but I'm not sure where to start. I've made and saved poses before but never a morph. I'm almost afraid to ask, because I'm thinking the answer might be to use magnets, which I'm deathly afraid of! I've tried using magnets before, but it seems so difficult to get it right, that I usually end up more frustrated than anything else. If that is the case, I could go and look thru Dr Geep's magnet tutorials again (he was gracious enough to send me a CD with his tutorials on it).  But... is there any other way? Please say there is! Either way, what I'd like to ultimately do is create the morph I want, use it for the piece I'm working on, then save it and share it in the freebies section.
If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd much appreciate it.
Thanks -

There are various ways to create morphs. Besides magnets, Poser also has its own morphing tools, although I think they're pretty limited. For that matter, for supported figures (not DAZ, unfortunately), you can create morphs in the Face Room.

Personally, I use a third party 3D app to create morphs. (In my case, I use Argile, but there are a lot of other options.)

My workflow goes something like this:

1. Make a copy of the blMilWom_v4b.obj geometry (that's for V4, substitute whatever figure you're using).

2. Use UV Mapper (free tool) to remove UVs.

3. Import the un-UV'ed obj into Argile.

4. Sculpt to my satisfaction.

5. Export obj, open in UV Mapper and import original UV map back in. Save UV mapped geometry.

6. Create INJ/REM poses in SyrINJ.

Please note that these are just the tools I use. There are lots of other alternatives.

Pre-plan your morph,  then stick to the plan.  Content creep will destroy any project.

Quote -

1. Use UV Mapper (free tool) to remove UVs.

2. Import the un-UV'ed obj into Argile.

3. Export obj, open in UV Mapper and import original UV map back in. Save UV mapped geometry.

May I ask why steps 2 and 5?

Not strictly necessary. It's a safety precaution. Some 3D apps seem to end up altering UVs when you don't intend it. Early on, I had better luck not messing things up this way.

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod.com

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod .com

I haven't looked at the tutorial yet (I've been messing with the magnets, and yep... they're just as frustrating as ever! I'm gonna have a look at it now. Wish me luck!

I just had a look in the tutorials for Wings, but there were only 3 of them, and none looked like what you're talking about....

A morph loaded to Poser only needs the vertex info , the uv data is not used. The vertex count and order is critical because Poser calculates the offset vector for each vertex and creates the morph deltas.   Any modelling program that preserves vertex order can be used to make morphs .

The UVs aren't used, no... but Poser's obj import and export functions are problematic, so it's smarter to use the original figure .obj, which of course has UVs. Whether or not you need to peel them off depends on whether the program you use has difficulties with them... I had bad luck early on, but OTOH, I really didn't know what I was doing at the time, and I'd prefer to be safe.

Quote - > Quote -

1. Use UV Mapper (free tool) to remove UVs.
2. Import the un-UV'ed obj into Argile.
3. Export obj, open in UV Mapper and import original UV map back in. Save UV mapped geometry.

May I ask why steps 2 and 5?

Most Poser figures etc. are mapped to use multiple textures and the overlapping UVs can cause trouble.
Also a lot modelling apps that do something with the groups defined in an OBJ file cause splits at the group boundaries which makes sculpting awkward at best, so removing them UVMapper provides a single continuous mesh (assuming the orignal is properly welded).

Is Black smith 3D still offering the free Morphing edition? If so, there is the easy to use app you want to create your morphs, no dealing with magnets ect just sculpting.

Here's a link:  http://www.blacksmith3d.com/Downloads/B3D-3.1.2.0-Win.zip

Alright this is my first attempt at making a tutorial. I can show you how to make a custom head morph in Blender. I tried to document every step the best i could so even someone who is not familiar with Blender can do it. It may take me a while to finish posting it.

Step 2:  Select bodypart (head for this example)

Step 3:  Select File-Export-Wavefront OBJ

Step 4:  Select ok

Step 8:  Create a name (like head original) for obj and Export to desktop

Step 13: Brings up this default menu

Deselect "NGons as FGons" and "image search" and lower "clamp scale" to 0.   Make sure the "Keep vert order" button is selected, Selected buttons are dark grey/green, deselected buttons are powder blue.
         
Then select import.

Step 19:  Select File-Export-Wavefront OBJ (the same way you imported the original obj), export obj to desktop by selecting the same little box in  step 11. Name it something like puffy head.obj

         Save the figure. You might want to make something a little better
         for your second morph than puffy head:blink:. Hope this tut helped a little.

Phantom3D, the free software by Blacksmith is easy to use, but... since it's free, they have it set up so that you can't save or export anything back out of the program, once you've finished. In order to do that you have to buy the program, then it can do all the saving and exporting you want.
210x2, Thank you for putting this together! I have Blender, and I've only used it once, long ago, so I'm very, very unfamiliar with it.... so the fact that you're making this tutorial simple, is very much appreciated!

Your welcome arrowhead42, just be patient. Everyone who tries to make morphs for the first time has trouble. Took me about a year to get really comfortable with the whole process. Just keep trying you'll get it.

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod.com

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod .com

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod.com

Attached Link: http://arcomp1.tripod.com

lol@ he's an asparagas..

Attached Link: http://artcomp1.tripod.com

Good information. But I am having a bit of trouble with this.

First, I am not altering the geometry externally.
What I have done is created a spun-dial morph that I like. But I would like to have something more useful than the "apply to figure" or "load figure options" instead, I would like to have a loadable full body morph (and later specific part morphs) that I can use in a  utilitarian fashion:

Dynamic clothing - applying the morph over several frames would be better than scaling the figure, I believe

Conforming clothing - (maybe?) applying sub-part morphs might work better for fits than what is usually offered (if any is at all), particularly if your model isnt the usual stick figure (ahem)

So I spin the dials. Then I export to OBJ. I uncheck everything but the "morph target" option. I select only the figure tree (I do include the top level, but not the mass and such)

Then I load up a plain V4.2, inject the morphs++ (used in dial spinning) and load the morph .obj....aaaand...poser(pro 8) crashes.

any ideas? or is it a waste of time?

How many parts of the body are you exporting as morph targets? How are you attempting to load the morph .obj?

BTW... Poser Pro is Poser Pro. Poser 8 does not yet exist.

Quote - How many parts of the body are you exporting as morph targets? How are you attempting to load the morph .obj?

BTW... Poser Pro is Poser Pro. Poser 8 does not yet exist.

I stand corrected on the version :)

anyhow...

I am using full body morphs in morphs++, could that be the problem? I was assuming that I would export everything as "body.obj" and could just import it as a morph for the whole figure.

I have been experimenting and it seems that anytime I try to load a morph to the whole body, the app crashes. But if I export each part (hips, chest, ab, etc) then I can apply a morph to each part. Not what I was after, but it may work?

Well I got what I wanted..sort of.

I exported each part and can load the morphs individually. It just means extra dial fiddling.

I dont think it will work with conforming clothing the way I wanted it to "wrong number of vertices" I guess I was hoping for a magic "fixitall" button

But I think it will work for dynamic clothing

Yeah, no, I don't think that would work with conforming clothing, as your geometry is altogether different. I've never used dynamic clothing, so I can't say I understand the principles there.

I'm still not wholly clear exactly what you're after. Is your whole purpose here in order to copy your settings to clothing, or is it firstly to re-create your character? And if the latter, are you needing all the individual dials or would you be satisfied with a single body dial?

As far as clothing goes, I think the simplest solution is to use an app that can add morphs to clothing (e.g. CrossDresser, Morphing Clothes etc). Of course, you'd have to save your character as a morph first.

Actually the conforming clothing idea was mores a "Wouldnt it be neat if..?" thought than anything else.

One of the ways to get dynamic clothing to fit better is to have the figure start out undersized and expand to fill the clothing. it prevents hiccups when the clothing intersects with the body during simulation

Okay, so what exactly are you trying to achieve, character-wise? A distributable set of dial spins for Morphs++, or exactly what?

Oh no this is just for me to use.

I prefer my characters to have more variety in their shapes than normally seen in poser. women with hips, men with bellies, etc.

I like dynamic clothing so I wanted to create a single morph dial that would allow the character to start with zero morphs and then morph during the simulation, allowing the clothing to work more successfully. But I appear to have a solution in the multiple morphs on multiple parts...its just more work than a single dial.

The conforming clothing idea was just a stray thought.

You are aware that once you have your figure all morphed to how you want, you can save your character as a cr2 when you're in the Figures menu, right?

If you want to turn that into one dial, Injection Magic should be able to take your new morph to a single INJ pose.

See trying to get this dynamic dress to fit a gal with this much curve is a pain in the neck without adjusting the character size. Before I was shrinking the character X and Z and then expanding 5-6 frames into the simulation to "fill" the dress. But even that would cause problems, because some items would try to resize with the figure causing other problems.

With the morphs, it seems to work much easier. add figure, load morphs, add clothing. pose at frame 15 of 30. zero morphs at 1 and and "full morphs" at 10. run sim and it looks pretty good in one shot.