Hello Everyone,
I am looking for some help with character creation, all help is GREATLY appreciated.  Ok here we go.
I've created a character in DAZStudio Advanced 3 and I want to fine tune her.  While creating her my area had a power outage and I wasn't able to save her but I did export her to an obj. file before the outage.  She had been Morphed loaded.  When I bring the Obj file back into DAZ to fine tune her I am not able to use the Morphs.  all that is available is the xyz plane.  I've tried importing my character into Poser 2010 to add V4 bones but that is turning out not so good.  I'm still learning the software.  Should my character have been saved as an OBJ file? or another format?  I've tried to export her as a CR2 file but DAZ crashes every time I attempt this.  What am I doing wrong? Can anyone help with this or direct to some helpful links for a proper work flow with character creation.  Thanks,
Director12 

The OBJ file doesn't contain rigging information. You should be able to import the OBJ as a morph for V4 if you have the Morph Loader plugin (available on its own or as part of the Figure Setup Tools - and since you are trying to export as CR2 it sounds as if you already have those). Load V4, select any part, go to the Edit menu and you should have an entry for Morph Loader; choose the same preset  as you used for exporting the OBJ, Try the default Load morphs for, and if that gives an error try Primary node (using vertex list only).

Now, if you were using Morphs++ (or other morph sets) that won't get you your original settings - just a single morph snapshot which has some disadvantages: you won't be able to share the result with others, as it encapsulates data from the DAZ morph set(s); you will lose the ERC linkages to the eyes, so they won't rotate correctly if you used any morphs that shifted them from their default position. However, it will get the basic shape back 9and if you made the morph with DFormers those problems won't apply anyway).

Thanks for getting back with me on this.  I'm still trying to figure it out.  I've imported the OBJ file back into DAZ and your right I see no rigging but I'm confused still.  When I created my character I had used V4 and injected all of the morphs and morphs ++.  Once back in none of the morphs are present in the parameters.  Now what you are saying is that I should bring in the OBJ and re apply the morphs?  and then export CR2?  DAZ crashes every time I try and do this but I haven't loaded the morphs.  Would that make a difference?  Thanks for your help.
Director12

No, morphs and rigging are Poser/DS features, held in the CR2 (Poser) or scene file (for stuff you save from DS). You don't have those. You do have CR2 exporter so you also have Morph Loader - import V4 as usual (so she'll be the default shape) then use Morph Loader to bring your saved OBJ in as a single morph, as described above. You've lost the dial settings for the individual morphs - they simply aren't in the OBJ and there's no practical way to get them out (in principle you might be able to run some kind of analysis to figure out possible dial settings to get the saved shape, but it would be a) a fairly complex programming job and b) glacially slow at best, quite possibly more like geologically slow) but at least you have the shape back, subject to the caveats about the eyes and not being able to share.

Thanks,
I'll give it a try.....It's driving me completely mad I can't figure this out......
Director12

RHaseltine,

For a minute I thought it was going to work until I received this error message. p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }

Loading morph Jordan...
Warning: Geometry did not match, no morphs created.

  p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }Loading morph Jordan...Geometry did not match, no morphs created.
Don't understand this since I created her from V4 base plus Morphs....What happened?

Thanks in advance

RHaseline,

GOT IT.  I actually created a new character with same references as the first and changed a few things.  Anyway, to make a long story short.  I was able to ad my OBJ file to V4 and see my morph dial.  Thanks so much for all your help....... Too tired to do anymore after being with this all afternoon.  I'll be back to ask more when I'm rested.  Thanks again,

Director12

Glad you've been able to get at least some of your work back.

Yes, truly a blessing.  I am now working to put her together.  I have a runtime specific for creating characters in my DAZ Studio content.  What is the best way to package her?  ie, mat poses, materials, etc.  I know how to apply makeup and all but do I save each part of her individually?
Thanks,
Director12

If you are thinking of sharing this character, and haven't rebuilt it from the original morphs, you need to go back to what I wrote in my first post - you can't share a spawned morph made with Morphs++ (or other DAZ or third party morph sets, other than one at RuntimeDNA that is a merchant resource). To share you do have to have the dial settings and provide a pose to recreate them. In general pacakging is a matter of taste - it's best to give people reasonable flexibility, but these days people do expect a pose (or pose preset) to apply all morphs and a pose or Materials preset to apply the whole base material settings, with possibly poses to set the morphs for head and for body separately and with poses or materials presets for make up options/eye colours/nail colours and so on as required.

RHaseltine,

Yes, I want to share this character and I'm sure I've done everything correctly.  I used V4 base unchecking all Morphs and Morphs++.  I restructured her face and body a little and then saved the OBJ file and then brought it back into DAZ.  I reloaded V4 first making sure all Morphs were disabled and then used Morph loader to bring in my OBJ file and apply it to V4.  Most if not all dials were emptied or grayed out once I figured out the geometry match.  I've used MResources to texture her.  Please let me know if this was done correctly.  I am using a Mac Pro Intel OS 10.6.3 and I wanted to know if there is a utility to create the INJ/Rem poses from DAZ.  I have Poser 2010 but I get confused in using the program.  The Pose INJ/REM Builder from DAZ is not compatible with my system and the Set Up Tools from DAZ is buggy to say the least.  I cannot get my cr2 file to show up in my menu bar and I'm not exactly sure what the EXP export's function does.  So any further assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Director12

But how did you make the morph you are using? With Morphs++ or other DAZ morphs, or by tweaking the mesh directly? Your earlier commets sound as if you used the DAZ morph sets, and if that's true you aren't licensed to distribute the result as a new mesh-based morph - all you can share are the morph settings* which as I understand you've lost.

• In a pose - for a freebie made with standard morphs you don't really need to worry about making the morph injectable, so using Injection Pose Builder is not needed (if you do want to make an injection pose, there are freely downloadable library files to make it work with a pose or figure file exported from Poser or DS). In general you can't use CR2 files for sharing characters - those are for new figures you make yourself (though it shouldn't crash, even so). Both Poser and DS (through the free Poser Format Exporter script) can generate a suitable pose.

My confusion has returned again.  If I create a character from scratch based on V4 I am not allowed to use her base?    All of the characters I have purchased from vendors are based on V4 or INJ/REM poses work with her character.  How is this so?  What am I missing here?  

I want to make sure we are on the same page because I believe I've created my own confusion.  What I've done was create a character for V4 and not from scratch.  My earlier threads seem to go in that direction but it's far from the case.  So would that change my situation in sharing this character on the Marketplace?

How did you create the character? And in what form does she now exist?

I used V4 to shape my character ie, facial and some body tweaking, then applied texture from a Merchant Resource.  When I exported what I've done to an OBJ File I lost the Morphs but used the Morph Loader once V4 was loaded into the scene.  I located my OBJ File from the Morph Loader prompt and applied it to V4.  Once the geometry was a match my character showed up in the parameters list.  All other Morphs for the most part were greyed out.  From there I used the resource head to apply makeup.  I haven't figured out yet how to apply the eye textures using Photoshop but I  was able to throw some eyes onto her from another source.  This is how far I have gotten....
Thanks for all your help
Director12

just a question. how did you make your character
did you combine other morphs like v4 morphs++ and made you character
or did you make the character by modifying the original v4 .obj

in the 1st case u should make an inj pose that will locate the morphs and apply them to v4 so u would get your character (note : if the person who buys yr product doesn't have v4 morphs++ the inj pose won't work

in the 2nd case u modify the mesh using other programas like zbush or lightwave. u need to create an inj pose (that included inj deltas). u don't need othe morphs for this to work because the morphs are included in the injpose.

other things like providing v4 cr2. with yr characetr morphs included is forbidden.

Hello thanks for your response.  I believe I created my character in your first question.  Although I have ZBrush I wouldn't even know where to begin to modify V4.  This is where my confusion has begun and thanks to RHaseltine I would still be lost trying to figure things out.  I need all the help I can get at this point from beginning to end.  DAZ doesn't provide many tutorials on the subject matter and this is where they fall short of having a great program.  Someone out here is knowledgeable to provide a workflow from start to finish in doing this.  Yes, it helps to google trying to find what you are looking for but who has the time.  This is not a lazy man's plea for help but it's ridiculous that I have ONLY 2  people responding to my inquiries.  Any help that you can share would be greatly appreciated.  I'm learning through trial and error alone. 
Thanks,
Director12

well i think it is simple. just load your character and open the pose exporter that you will find under the scripts folder inside daz studio.
 a window will pop up. uncheck everything that has relation with rotation translation scale etc. and check only the option that says export morphs and chose the directory that u want.

in that directory you'll find your pose. just make a png image of 99x99 size dimension and give it the same name as the pose. create a folder in the runtime/librarie/pose/ destination and paste the two file into it. now in daz look in the pose section and open your folder that u created. you'll find the pose. if you load v4 and double click the pose. it will turn into your character.

note : if the person that will have your character doesn't hava the morphs that u used to create yr character (for example v4 morph ++) the pose won't work because there's no morphs to load.

that's just one way to do it.

Thank you so much....this helps.  I'll have to work on it tomorrow when I get off work.  Thanks, once again
Director 12

glad to be at yr service. gonna go now to do some work of my own

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, you made you character's shape with the DAZ morphs. The only way you are allowed to share that is as a pose which will set the values of those morphs - exporting as an OBJ and then loading that as a morph isn't allowed, as someone who doesn't have Morphs++ on their machine could use the shape (and there's another drawback - as I think I mentioned earlier, several of the head morphs change the shape of the eye sockets and the morphs are linked to the size and position controls of the eyes so that they still fit; your exported OBJ lacks those links and loading it as a morph doesn't reinstate them, so there's a good chance that the eyes will beahve oddly as you pose them). Since you don't have the original dial settings for Morphs++ you can't share this character's morph (the texturing isn't affected by this), though you can use it for your own images.

What adnan suggests is the right way to share a morph made with Morphs++ (or other morph sets) but it works only if the figure you are saving from still has the original settings applied - when you have just the one dial for the imported morph it won't help as other people won't have that single morph (and as I said, you can't share it - well, you could use RTEncoder to encode it against an item from Morphs++, but people are generally reluctant to use encoded files).

Quote - The problem is that, as far as I can tell, you made you character's shape with the DAZ morphs. The only way you are allowed to share that is as a pose which will set the values of those morphs - exporting as an OBJ and then loading that as a morph isn't allowed, as someone who doesn't have Morphs++ on their machine could use the shape (and there's another drawback - as I think I mentioned earlier, several of the head morphs change the shape of the eye sockets and the morphs are linked to the size and position controls of the eyes so that they still fit; your exported OBJ lacks those links and loading it as a morph doesn't reinstate them, so there's a good chance that the eyes will beahve oddly as you pose them). Since you don't have the original dial settings for Morphs++ you can't share this character's morph (the texturing isn't affected by this), though you can use it for your own images.

What adnan suggests is the right way to share a morph made with Morphs++ (or other morph sets) but it works only if the figure you are saving from still has the original settings applied - when you have just the one dial for the imported morph it won't help as other people won't have that single morph (and as I said, you can't share it - well, you could use RTEncoder to encode it against an item from Morphs++, but people are generally reluctant to use encoded files).

just to be clear you can export the .obj and make modifications on them. you won't provide the .obj but an inj. pose that contains the modifications you made on the .obj.
for example The Girl Next Door by blackhearted is not made from the v3 morphs provided by daz but was made bu modifying the v3 .obj
if you provide and .inj pose there is no copyright issues. but if you privude the .obj there is an issue.

That's not really the issue - an OBJ file can be stripped, removing all but the lines starting with a v, and that's OK to distribute as far as I am aware (because you can't get the head from the result - it's just a cloud of disconnected points) though providing deltas and an injection pose is preferred 9and works for people who don't have the Morph Loader plugin). The issue is whether the morph is all the vendor's own work (as with GND, which was made by shaping the base mesh directly) or whether it was shaped wholly or in part using the DAZ morphs. If the DAZ morphs were used then the distributed files must need the user to have the same morphs installed in order to work (by supplying a pose which sets them or via an encoded file) which isn't the case if the character is supplied as an obj or as an injection pose loading a single compound morph.

Quote - That's not really the issue - an OBJ file can be stripped, removing all but the lines starting with a v, and that's OK to distribute as far as I am aware (because you can't get the head from the result - it's just a cloud of disconnected points) though providing deltas and an injection pose is preferred 9and works for people who don't have the Morph Loader plugin). The issue is whether the morph is all the vendor's own work (as with GND, which was made by shaping the base mesh directly) or whether it was shaped wholly or in part using the DAZ morphs. If the DAZ morphs were used then the distributed files must need the user to have the same morphs installed in order to work (by supplying a pose which sets them or via an encoded file) which isn't the case if the character is supplied as an obj or as an injection pose loading a single compound morph.

i totaly agree with you