Those look great, Mike.

Joel: I get what you mean about it getting thinner at the palm instead of bunching up there But not the rest :lol:  A morph could be used to solve it, or perhaps odf will find a better arangment.

Joel: I'm going to upload these Morphs to the developers site, for further work, if anyone wants to work on them some more. I was able to get around the toecap by assigning it to it's own group, in UVmapper, then changing it back with Kawecki's morpher. It worked pretty well to be able to get at the toes under the toecap.  They could still use some fine work

Edit: Thanks odf.

Mike, did you morph the toecaps as well, or just the toes?

I understand the bit about the bunched up flesh as well, once I get past the angle talk.

I'll see if I can get the D|S setup tools working on my machine. Making some more JCMs sounds like fun, but only if I can sculpt them on the posed figure.

Yes I morphed the toe caps as well. Some arrangements of the toes still mess up the toe caps but for most movements they follow the toes.  I.E. you can't have the big toe down and the small toes up (but thats hardly possible anyway) But you can have the big toe up and the small toes down and the toe cap should be fine.  You'll have to check them out. 

Ya those D/S setup tools are great for doing posed morphs. I used to have to use the layers funtion in Zbrush to do posed morphs and it was a real headache. If you get them running you're gonna fall in love with them.  They also make doing the erc for things like the hand dials  a short simple job.

Excellent! Yeah, stockings do restrict the movement of the toes, so we can't expect every potential pose to work with them. If basic up and down, spread and big toe up work, that's all we need.

I've moved the falloff spheres for the thumb grasp around a bit, and I think it looks much better now. Will post pictures in a minute.

Incidentally, this render makes it painfully obvious that the shapes of the fingers need some more attention. :ohmy:

The fingers might look a WHOLE lot better with a detailed texture map on the palm.  With a good bump or displacement map,it'll kick butt.

The "bottom" of the thumb should be closer to the center of the hand.  It's at an angle, so I can't really tell.  The IN side of the bulge formed by the tensing thumb muscle starts about at the center of the base of the hand.  The after looks closer to the target, but I can't really tell at this angle.

You are definitely on the right track,now!

That looks better.

I wanted to say too that the D/S setup tools really like what ever you did to the wording in the CR2.  The quality controle function doesn't ask for any changes anymore at all Just thought you'd like to know the CR2 is DAZ quality approved :lol:

Quote - " the CR2 is DAZ quality approved :lol:"

That's always good to know!:laugh:  Y'know what they say: Mess with best and end up with the rest."  Or something like that! ^__^V,, Hehehehehehheheh!

Quote - Just thought you'd like to know the CR2 is DAZ quality approved :lol:

That's a good thing, right?

:lol:

regarding the hand, maybe the camera perspective is throwing things off, but the shape looks a bit odd - the base of the pinky finger seems MUCH further back than is normal.

Quote - regarding the hand, maybe the camera perspective is throwing things off, but the shape looks a bit odd - the base of the pinky finger seems MUCH further back than is normal.

Thanks! It could be the perspective, but I'll check.

Cheers
JB

JB123: Those eyes look fantastic. I like your concept of making both modular morph sets and independent individual morphs very much.

Contact me if you'd like to put some morphs up for review on the developers site.

Looks very promising, JB!

I agree with the basic premise of mix-and-match morphs BIG-TIME!  One of the things I REALLY dislike about the DAZ figures is the 'John,Paul and George' syndrome(don't give Ringo the time of day, thank you) full facial morphs they do.  If leads to sloppiness, and laziness of posing the figure, and setting the morphs.  As an artist, it's called "palette-limiting" and I'm against that idea.

I fully support your idea.  Shows merit,JB123!

Quote - JB123: Those eyes look fantastic. I like your concept of making both modular morph sets and independent individual morphs very much.

Contact me if you'd like to put some morphs up for review on the developers site.

Just to be sure is Antonia's geometry final? I have a decent sized list of morphs I want to make and I don't want to start checking off my list until I know for sure the geometry isn't going to change. I'll PM you and send some up for review when I get quite a few done. It could be a while though because I don't want to rush it.

Quote - Just to be sure is Antonia's geometry final? I have a decent sized list of morphs I want to make and I don't want to start checking off my list until I know for sure the geometry isn't going to change. I'll PM you and send some up for review when I get quite a few done. It could be a while though because I don't want to rush it.

The geometry is final when you say so. :biggrin: Seriously, I wouldn't make any changes at this point unless there was an urgent need to, and I certainly wouldn't make any that would break a substantial amount of third-party content. That means, the more morphs are made based on the current geometry, the less likely it is to change.

To give you a less salomonic answer: at this point I'd say the head is definitely final. Everything else - with the possible exception of the hands and feet - almost certainly is, as well.

Definitely take your time with the morphs. I spent years on the base mesh, so I understand quality work takes time. Give me your email, anyway, so you can keep up with what people are working on (if you like).

By the way - and this is to everyone making stuff for Antonia: you can still send me things in private if you prefer that. The developers site is a good way to share files with a slightly larger group, particularly for free content in development. But there's no obligation whatsoever to use it, just as there's no obligation to make content for Antonia free.

I just thought I'd mention that every once in a while.

Wow!
A lot happening overnight...lol.

My internet went down due to the winter storm we had, got it going  late yesterday and it went south for several hours today.

But this time a techie gave better instructions to my daughter and how to access the site to get it going right again,they had a firewall enabled that kept locking us out...sigh.

So I'll get back to my work on Antonia soon.
Almost ready to post some stuff for a checkover on the developer's site.

The hands are looking better and the feet , very much so. :)

Oh cool! JB123, I have been wondering how a person might go about making modular morphs like that, that would play well together. Any chance on a follow along? How do you get them to blend well with eachother? 

Hi Believable3D, BluEcho, Joel, odf.    (wonder why they don't have any wave smilies?)

I have a decent sized list of morphs I want to make and I don't want to start checking off my list until I know for sure the geometry isn't going to change.

If you want to post the Morph list here or pm me and odf with the list, I know I'd appreciate it.  I'm planning to do so more facial and maybe breast morphs, and I don't want to duplicate the efforts you want to do.  Sort of like reinventing the wheel. I did some expression morphs from a list, but we have enough folks doing morphs NOW that we can duplicate efforts without meaning to.

Does this sound like a good idea to others?  Doing up a list of morphs to do or really desired, and then a catch as people get to them kind of list? I was thinking of some 'fantasy' and 'scifi' morphs for the face, if JBL123 wants to add to the racial morphs already started?

I think it would generally be a good idea to have an "official" online list of content that people are asking for or working on, maybe with some kind of status indication. At first I thought about putting it up on the developers site, but maybe it would be better somewhere where it's publicly accessible.

So how about I create "Der Official Antonia Seite" on Google whenever's the next time I manage to get home from work and don't collapse right after dinner, and maintain that list there? Feel free to bully me into doing it faster by starting to post your suggestions.

And...  GO!!! :biggrin:

Joel, fantasy morphs sounds good.
You gonna do a cat type morph for her?
I have a relly great kitty texture in mind for her if you do. :)

OH NOES!!! NOT TEH FURRIEZ!!! :scared:

:biggrin:

Quote - Oh cool! JB123, I have been wondering how a person might go about making modular morphs like that, that would play well together. Any chance on a follow along? How do you get them to blend well with eachother? 

Well it is alot of back and forth that's for sure. It's not an easy thing to pull off and Im really just learning how to do it. I have seen the idea talked about on a few CG forums many years ago and theres a guy on zbrush central that did a set of individual eyes,noses and lips that was really cool. If you've been there you've probably seen it. 

Back when P6 first came out I tried making modular morphs with magnets for james that mixed well but I failed badly. I always wanted a figure that could mix morphs and even reverse well but nothing existed until Apollo came out. I have to say Anton is a master of this technique and I have no clue how he does his. 

So lately I have learned blender a bit and practice sculpting fairly often. blah blah blah get to the point right. Lol. How is it done? For lack of a better word I wing it. Here are a few things I do and I assure you it's nothing special.

I put some thought into each morph before I make it.
I try not to detail the hell out of it if it's meant to work with other morphs
I use locked axis morphing alot. I try avoiding things like rotation that can create pinching especially on areas that already have creases or tightly spaced geometry. When using scultpting brushes I use the grab tool mostly and if I have to smooth things I use a very low setting and make several passes. I try to avoid smoothing because it a can really affect other morphs if it smooths to much but on another morph I used less smoothing. Which is the main reason why I like the grab brush ( especially with locked axis ). almost exclusively. It's more work but much more precise.

I use keyshapes in blender. There is a slider that  you can adjust positive and negative values so you can easily see how good or bad it looks at high pos and neg values. You can use the timeline to blend them together to check what works good and what needs to be refined. When I have a morph that works good ( enough ) at 1.5 and -1.5. I then export the morph at 0.750. That way the morph is more subtle but has a greater range. I don't always do this but it helps alot sometimes. Sometimes I have to go into edit mode and adjust things vertex by vertex. Sometimes it just doesn't work and I start over from scratch...sometimes theres not enough time in the day and I give up and try another day. Lol.

So thats it nothing special.  Just alot of tweak,test, fix,rinse and repeat.

Great advice, JB123! I haven't made many morphs myself, so far, but what you write makes a lot of sense, and your results speak for themselves.

A tip I read for making expression morphs is to animate the morph and look at how the individual vertices move. You want them to move in a very smooth, coordinated way, as if you were deforming a rubber sheet, if you know what I mean. I think this is probably a good idea in general when making morphs that are meant to play well together, not just expression morphs.

By the way, did you find symmetry easy to achieve when making morphs with Blender?

Quote -

I have a decent sized list of morphs I want to make and I don't want to start checking off my list until I know for sure the geometry isn't going to change.

If you want to post the Morph list here or pm me and odf with the list, I know I'd appreciate it.  I'm planning to do so more facial and maybe breast morphs, and I don't want to duplicate the efforts you want to do.  Sort of like reinventing the wheel. I did some expression morphs from a list, but we have enough folks doing morphs NOW that we can duplicate efforts without meaning to.

Does this sound like a good idea to others?  Doing up a list of morphs to do or really desired, and then a catch as people get to them kind of list? I was thinking of some 'fantasy' and 'scifi' morphs for the face, if JBL123 wants to add to the racial morphs already started?

I agree a public list might be a good idea but I see no reason why we can't have more than one person doing similar morphs etc. I know if I make a hips wide morph and someone else does too they will be different. Say my hips wide morph does something that someone elses doesn't and vice-versa but together if gives you just the shape you wanted. The more options the better.
If people wanna do similar morphs I say go for it. It can't hurt to have more options. I'll probably add  JB at the end of my morphs so that poser doesn't have a fit if someone else has a morph  named the same. I have no idea how poser would handle the same morph names, never tried it so I'll just add the tag at the end. Time for bed, I'll post my list tommorow.

Quote - By the way, did you find symmetry easy to achieve when making morphs with Blender?

Yes it works really well however if the mesh is not modelled symmetrical ( mirror opposite ) you can have problems. The more asymmetry modelled in the worse it gets but If the mesh is modelled  with subtle asymmetry it actually makes your morphs look more realistic. 

Did you model Antonia with some subtle asymmetry? I haven't noticed any problems using symmetry when sculpting.

Quote - > Quote - By the way, did you find symmetry easy to achieve when making morphs with Blender?

Yes it works really well however if the mesh is not modelled symmetrical ( mirror opposite ) you can have problems. The more asymmetry modelled in the worse it gets but If the mesh is modelled  with subtle asymmetry it actually makes your morphs look more realistic. 

Did you model Antonia with some subtle asymmetry? I haven't noticed any problems using symmetry when sculpting.

No, she's perfectly symmetric. I know real people aren't, but I think it's better to introduce asymmetry via morphs rather than have it in the base figure.

By the way, I agree that it won't hurt to have different versions of a morph. I think that list should probably include preview pictures where available, so people could get a better idea of whether they would just duplicate someone else's work or make - to stick with your example - a significantly different "hips wide" move.

Thanks JB123, I think I have some movie files with the guy from Zbrush you mentioned. I get most of what you said. "locked axis morphing" ? does this mean morphing only in z or y? Zbrush has a slider very much like you mention.  Do you try to feather the edges of the morph basically spread it subtly out at the edges?

  Avoiding sharp changes makes sense. So then smile lines creases-wrinkles is something you might add as a separate morph all its own yes? I know I have to just get in and experiment on my own, but I like to ask questions if I get the chance.

odf: you mention them moving like a rubber sheet? So basically you don't want the edges-vertices bunching up too closely together in any one spot, yes?

Somewhere in this thread was mentioned an idea of groupinng morphs together by using  a suffix or prefix  to define wheather or not a particular morph plays well with others. I like that idea, though I'm not sure the average user would learn what they meant.

Quote - odf: you mention them moving like a rubber sheet? So basically you don't want the edges-vertices bunching up too closely together in any one spot, yes?

That depends. For some morphs you might want the bunching at some spots, but otherwise, yes, you'd try to avoid it. But it's more general: let's say you have three vertices in a row. Then you want them to move as a row, not individually at different speeds. You don't want your edge loops turn into zig-zags, or some edges within a loop go in different directions from the rest.

I can't express it very well, but I think you know it when you see it. You want it to look like the vertices move in a organized way when you animate the morph between 0 and 1, not just the final shape to be right.

I think a good way to describe it is... when you use a Poser Magnet (with default fall-off curves), the strongest effect is towards the center of the magnet zone, with an nice, smooth transition (of less and less effect) out towards the outer edges of the magnet zone/sphere.  So the vertices on the outer edges do in fact move 'slower' than the ones in towards the center, but it's a smooth movement / even distribution / proportional movement overall.

Now contrast that with trying to replicate a similar morph by re-positioning one vertex at a time in a modelling app.  You might end up with the same general shape, but chances are that you'd have a hard time getting as smooth/proportional movement (of course most modelling apps have soft-selection tools and other deformers/tools that serve the same purpose).

EDIT: I haven't used it much yet myself, but I'm pretty sure that the Morph Putty tool in Poser also does soft-selection, for the same purpose.

Thanks odf, Spanki, I get it. This brings to mind the morphs I made for the X and Z rots on the thighs. I had a heck of a time getting them to work together because the two morphs wanted to go in cross directions and sortof collide with eachother, which kept making a big dent in the butt.

It's sortof the same thing I can see if the vertices travel independently at different speeds (not smoothly) then there will be points in the morph where they may collide with eachother and cause deformities, not to mention setting up future problems with other morphs applied on top. But if you keep the vertices moving smoothly along then at any point that you stop the morph they will be in a uniform order for the next morph. (whew! that was a sentence!)

Well, I don't want to highjack the thread, but this is interesting

Edit:  You know I never knew that they would even move at different speeds along the way, I always thought they moved smoothly along to the final end morph. Huh! I have to rethink things.

Quote - Edit:  You know I never knew that they would even move at different speeds along the way, I always thought they moved smoothly along to the final end morph.

Actually, just to clarify a bit... the transition is linear (from 0.0 dial to 1.0 on the morph dial), but since some vertices (ideally) move further than others for any particular morph, those vertices need to move further for each turn of the dial (ie. they move faster if viewed as an animation or real-time update).

The key point is that there should always be a smooth transition between the verts that move the most and the verts not involved at all in the morph.  The ones on the edge of the effected area need to ramp up, instead of an abrupt edge (which would cause a crease/fold/gathering).

...having said that, JCMs are a bit of a different animal... due to the interaction with the deformation of the bones.   For JCMs, you have to wing it a bit and the resulting morph (if viewed on it's own, without the bone deformation applied) many not be completely smooth around the edges (the goal is still the same, it's just a bit trickier to accomplish :) ).

JCM's are what I can't figure  out to do. I'm not really sure the HOW of doing it.  I'm really excited to learn or find out,though!  This is exciting!
Aside the fantasy morphs (including some beast-people morphs--Island of Doctor Moreau anyone?) I was thinking of some muscle-morphs,too.  I have NO clue how to do FBM's or such. That may be more than my Morphing software might handle easily., but I CAN do individual body-parts fairly quickly.

Quote - Thanks JB123, I think I have some movie files with the guy from Zbrush you mentioned. I get most of what you said. "locked axis morphing" ? does this mean morphing only in z or y? Zbrush has a slider very much like you mention.  Do you try to feather the edges of the morph basically spread it subtly out at the edges?

  Avoiding sharp changes makes sense. So then smile lines creases-wrinkles is something you might add as a separate morph all its own yes? I know I have to just get in and experiment on my own, but I like to ask questions if I get the chance.

odf: you mention them moving like a rubber sheet? So basically you don't want the edges-vertices bunching up too closely together in any one spot, yes?

Somewhere in this thread was mentioned an idea of groupinng morphs together by using  a suffix or prefix  to define wheather or not a particular morph plays well with others. I like that idea, though I'm not sure the average user would learn what they meant.

Yes locked axis ( morphing only along X, Y, or Z axis is exactly what I meant ) As far as feathering edges yes but I really try to avoid it altogether if I can by only using grab or move tools. If I do use other type I use very low settings and build it up slowly. Adding seperate sharp creases like wrinkles and such is not a bad idea but it's more work but you have to kind of pick your spots and stick to it for all similar morphs or it looks strange. I.E if you have ripped abs 1 and ripped abs 2 regardless of shape changes those deep cut should be in the same place or they will look odd when combined.

I did mention about the suffix/prefix thing. I used ODF's user name as the Acronym
O=Only morphs independantly
D=Does morph well with others but at a limited range
F=Fully reversable ( or atleast close to )

Btw do you know about Zbrushes morph brush? You can load a different sculpt and morph brush away parts you don't like then smooth out the edges after. Pretty cool. My brother has Zbrush,  he showed me this and since I can't do it in Blender ( AFAIK ) and can't afford it Im very jealous.

Spanki thats very interesting about morph speed ( aleast in the sense that you were taking about ) I never really thought of it like that before but I do lessen certain undesired effects to slow them down by using less of it.  I like using the timeline with a wireframe to see exactly whats going on over time. It's a good way to judge what could be less or more to make a smoother transition between morphs.

Different subject: does anyone know a - free or cheap - tool that can extract joint parameters from a cr2 and copy them to another cr2?

I'm starting to think I need to write my own cr2 editor on top of everything else. The ones I have either don't do everything I need or are so cryptic that I don't know what the heck they do. Since Poser insists on inserting random bullshit into cr2s on saving, I basically need a tool that compares two files structurally and lets me decide interactively which bits to copy over, so I can edit things in Poser and transfer my edits to a cr2 that I know is "clean".

I think it's time I buy the D|S tools and see whether they are more reliable than Poser. Like Poser, they have their own ideas of what should and should not go into the file, but maybe they're at least consistent.

Quote - Different subject: does anyone know a - free or cheap - tool that can extract joint parameters from a cr2 and copy them to another cr2?

I'm starting to think I need to write my own cr2 editor on top of everything else. The ones I have either don't do everything I need or are so cryptic that I don't know what the heck they do. Since Poser insists on inserting random bullshit into cr2s on saving, I basically need a tool that compares two files structurally and lets me decide interactively which bits to copy over, so I can edit things in Poser and transfer my edits to a cr2 that I know is "clean".

I think it's time I buy the D|S tools and see whether they are more reliable than Poser. Like Poser, they have their own ideas of what should and should not go into the file, but maybe they're at least consistent.

You should PM lesbently (sp?) if anyone would know he would.   

You should PM lesbently (sp?) if anyone would know he would.   
I concur.  The folks at Sixus1 (Les and Bekah) are a real fountain of knowledge and could answer some questions with hard answers about  Poser's Mystifying Cr2 BS! :laugh:  Everytime I used a Cr2 editor, I crash Poser, so I'm knowledgeless .

Quote - Spanki thats very interesting about morph speed ( aleast in the sense that you were taking about ) I never really thought of it like that before but I do lessen certain undesired effects to slow them down by using less of it.  I like using the timeline with a wireframe to see exactly whats going on over time. It's a good way to judge what could be less or more to make a smoother transition between morphs."

Thanks... I first started thinking about the smoothness of morphs in terms of 'speed' (or distance or vertex travel over time) when looking into some issues with a particular morph while working with Cage on the "Moving morphs between different figures" python script project.

As I animated (applied) the morph more and more, I observed that some vertices were "moving faster" than others in the immediate surrounding area... which meant that they were moving disproportionately too fast (or "too far" if talking about a single frame).

Another good tool for checking morph smoothness is to over-dial them - to 2.0 or even 5.0 - and see how they act (under-dialing in the reverse direction helps too).  If they get progressively "bumpy", then the morph may "look acceptable" at the desired setting, but it's probably not very smooth, which means it probably won't play well in combination with other morphs. 

(for the curious, if you go back a few pages earlier in that thread, you can see similar experiements of our tool, but using some nice smooth morphs)

So, I tried the latest version of Daz Studio, and I still can't get it to work properly on my machine. Which unfortunately means I won't be able to use the Daz Setup Tools either. Now most of the rigging is done, but I'd really like to spend some more time on JCMs.

So my question is this: Is there any other tool that would enable me to make JCMs on the posed figure?

If not, I'd like some input on how to write one. Basically, given the original figure, the posed figure before the morph, the posed figure after the morph, the pose and the joint setup - particularly the center and the axis rotations - I should be able to reconstruct the weights that were applied to each vertex. From that, I should be able to determine the morph to apply to the unposed figure in order to get the correct result for the posed figure.

With me so far? If there's sufficient interest in this question, we can move it to Poser Technical. But since the technical forums tend to be a bit slow and Spanki is already reading here, I thought I'd start right here with the thinking out loud.

Come to think of it: if we only rotate one joint, and only on one axis - which is reasonable when making JCMs - it should be enough to have those three meshes. If I find enough points that were moved all the way, I can determine what that rotation was and then compare the movement of individual vertices in the posed actor and its parents with the full movement. That will tell me how each vertex was moved from the original to the posed position, so I'll be able to reverse that and thus reverse engineer my required morph.

That would be pretty neat because it would save me the effort of extracting information from Poser files.

I'd explain more, but I have a feeling this kind of topic is more of the 'special interests' kind. :biggrin:

I think thats pretty similar to what the Daz morphloader pro does for making JCM's , it basically subtracts the joint movement of the mesh from the posed morphed figure. I think so anyway. But I am a complete dummy when it comes to the inner workings of any program.

I'm on the way to hit the sack, but here are some quick comments/thoughts...

To start with, I'd recommend looking through Dimension3D's various tools.  I seem to recall being able to pose figures in one of his tools (which may have also been a morph-generation tool), but I don't recall the particulars. Another place to check would be PhilC's stuff.

Barring any existing tools, my only 'quick' comment is... divining Poser's rigging system shouldn't be under-estimated.  Each joint has it's own axis and rotation order and once you get that far, you still have to contend wiith the blend zones, spherical fall-off zones and (potentially) bulge settings (noting that all of those can and often are set differently for each axis). You may not be talking/thinking about messing with all of that though, depending on your approach.

If you want to just use Poser Magnets on the figure, posed inside Poser, the trick is in getting the magnets (zones) place correctly... which is obscured by the pose itself, so you kinda have to figure out which vertices you want to affect, then un-pose the joint and get the magnet and zone set up, then re-pose it and twiddle with the magnet - not a lot of fun :).

Quote - I think thats pretty similar to what the Daz morphloader pro does for making JCM's , it basically subtracts the joint movement of the mesh from the posed morphed figure. I think so anyway. But I am a complete dummy when it comes to the inner workings of any program.

Pretty much! The slight complication is that, unlike morphs, joint rotations are not linear. Say I move a point forward (z axis) by some amount, then rotate around the y axis by 90 degrees. That turns the z movement into an x movement. So I can't just add or subtract displacements like I do when combining morphs. I have to know exactly what that rotation did.

The good news, though, is this: I don't have to know the details of how all the joint setup angles, bulges and spherical falloffs work. All I need to know is how each vertex effectively moves. Which I think should be possible to reconstruct by comparing the before and after state. I'll do some experiments when I find the time. But if someone reads this and has some more insights on Poser's inner workings than I do, your input would be very much appreciated.

...I may have been thinking about one of markdc's tools.

Quote - ...The good news, though, is this: I don't have to know the details of how all the joint setup angles, bulges and spherical falloffs work. All I need to know is how each vertex effectively moves. Which I think should be possible to reconstruct by comparing the before and after state. I'll do some experiments when I find the time. But if someone reads this and has some more insights on Poser's inner workings than I do, your input would be very much appreciated.

...right, you should be able to use some delta approach - I was just warning against the more complex approach :).

Quote - Barring any existing tools, my only 'quick' comment is... divining Poser's rigging system shouldn't be under-estimated.  Each joint has it's own axis and rotation order and once you get that far, you still have to contend wiith the blend zones, spherical fall-off zones and (potentially) bulge settings (noting that all of those can and often are set differently for each axis). You may not be talking/thinking about messing with all of that though, depending on your approach.

He, post crossing!

Yep, I'd definitely try to avoid getting into all of the intricacies. My hope is - as I said in my post above - to bypass all that and just look at the effective weights. Not sure it'll work, but it seems worth an experiment.

Of course, if Dimension3D or PhilC had already done something like that, that would be even better. I have quite a few of their tools, so I'll go digging.

What modeler do you use odf?