Okay, I wanted to share some tips and ideas for the Dependent Parameters Editor in P8.  If you're unfamiliar with it or don't know how to use it there is a video tutorial on it here:

http://shaderworks.rois-sorciers.com/tutorials/P8_dependant/
I will also try to describe how I use it below.

Now, before I start babbling I want to make few things clear. Dependent Parameters are not new to P8. What is new is the DP editor. I´m not an expert on the subject, in fact all I know is that a DP is a parameter that controls other parameters. My hope with this thread is that someone will hopefully learn from it and others will point out any errors I might present. That being said, let's get started...

Where is the DP editor and where should I create a master dial?
First of all, you can create a master dial on anything and let it control anything.  For instance, you could load a sphere prop and create a master dial on it to control the lights in your scene or to bend a character at the waist.

To create a master dial:

1. Select the body part or prop you want use.
2. Go to the Parameters tab.
3. Click the little white arrow (next to properties) and select "Create new Master Parameter".

This opens the DP editor. You'll see a button that says "Start Teaching" and value knob at zero.
Below are the steps that I take to create a dial.

1. Set the value to '1'
2. Hit the "Start Teaching" button.
3. Adjust your parameters (again, this could be anything. To keep this simple, start by bending an arm on a figure or something similar).  As you adjust any parameters you see them listed in the window below the "Start Teaching" button.  You can select any parameter in the window and hit "Remove Selected" if you want to get rid of it.
4. When you're happy with your selection of parameters change Master value in the editor to Zero.
5. Here comes the tedious bit. Backtrack every parameter change you made and put it back to zero.
6. Hit "Stop Teaching" and close the editor.

You should now have a dial on your prop or body part called "Master 1". You can change it's name in the dial settings. If you want to edit the parameters click the arrow next to the dial and select "Edit Dependencies". This will open the editor again and you remove parameters or add new ones the same way you did before.

**
Some Tips**

There are millions of uses with DP and I wanted to share a couple of tips on how I´ve found it useful. This may seem pretty obvious uses but I want to share them anyway ;)

Tip 1 - Expressions.
I stopped using library expressions a long time ago. When you have custom head morph you usually have to tweak it to be useful especially regarding V4's mouth. So I like to create Master Dials on V4's head for expressions.  The benefit is that you can also include her jaws.
For instance, if I want to make nice open smile it usually includes moving her mouth down a bit, adjusting her upper and lower jaw and adjusting her lips with various morphs.

Tip 2 - Dynamic Cloth
When I create a new character morph I usually try make a new Master dial for the body so I have V4 "Zeroed" at '0' and my character morph at '1'.  This makes using Dynamic cloth a lot easier.
I load the Dynamic cloth, make sure the Master Dial is at '0' at frame one. I put it to '1' at frame 15.  I then run a 30 frame simulation and if I like the results I spawn a morph target on the cloth. This way I can start a simulation at frame 1 with the cloth morphed to my figure.

Some ideas

Here are some ideas for DP uses that I haven't tried yet:

1. Control conforming clothes that has dynamic morphs
   This would be for skirts and dresses that dynamic movement controls. You could make a Master Dial that bends your character and controls the dress morphs accordingly.

2. Hair movement
   Create a dial that moves the hair with your characters head.

3. Basic Poses prop
   This is something I want to try. Make a prop that has basic poses for a character. This could be various standing poses, sit pose and a couple of lying poses.  If it would a female character you could morph her breast to more realistic when lying down.

Some Questions (actually it's just the one)

Like I said earlier I´m far from being and expert on this and I have a question  for someone who knows more:

1. I´ve tried saving a prop with master dials to the library to use it in another scene but this doesn´t work. I was using V4 in both scenes and made sure it had all morphs loaded in both scenes. How can I save a "control prop" in the library?

That's it! Hopefully someone will find this useful. I've never written a tutorial or anything like that so if anything is unclear don't hesitate to ask.

Thankyou for this, I've not had a chance to try out the DP's in P8 yet but from your description I can see the uses.
As to your question, how to save a control prop, not sure if this will work bit if you save the characterin the save subset dialogue you might be able to save the prop there too, certainly when saving characters, any props that are parented to them are saved too.

Yes, saving the prop with the character would probably work but was thinking how you could save a prop to share with others...

Thank you Vestmann for this. I have been struggling to understand the DP. This definitely helps.  Although I know very little myself about DP, I will keep track of this thread and add anything I might discover.

I've been put off playing with this potentially extremely useful new feature because I can't see a straightforward method of saving the newly created parameters and copying them to another, similar character or prop. Could it be achieved using a python script?

 I wonder if Vestmann's "posing prop" could be saved if it was a CR2? It still would only need one bodypart, but Poser sometimes allows things on figures it won't on a prop.

Isn´t a "posing prop" the same thing as Posemagic?   When you use that injection is involved but like a said I don't know much about this...

could we use dependent parameters so that a specific object could use a light while the others wouldnt use hat light?

for example a Box would use Light_1 and the sphere would use Light_2?

you think this could be done?

The problem with trying to save a control prop is that the dependency is actually part of the figure itself. At the very least, you'd have to create INJ poses to inject the dependencies into the character, to go along with the prop.

Quote - The problem with trying to save a control prop is that the dependency is actually part of the figure itself. At the very least, you'd have to create INJ poses to inject the dependencies into the character, to go along with the prop.

Is there any tutorial available that fits this circumstance?

Quote - could we use dependent parameters so that a specific object could use a light while the others wouldnt use hat light?

for example a Box would use Light_1 and the sphere would use Light_2?

you think this could be done?

Not sure what you mean.  Would the box control light_1 and the sphere light_2 or would the box only be lit by Light_1 etc.?

box only lit by Light_1

 I don't see how that could be done but then I don't know too much about this technique...

Could be done with minor changes to the material room.

with scripts or with a new poser version?

I'm saying changes to the material room - that clearly means a new Poser version. Materials are scripts, but they are not Python scripts. In Renderman, they are in Renderman Shading Language (RSL). We cannot presently get at the RSL (or whatever it is) behind the scenes in Poser. If we could, then I could make it work.

SM give bagginsbill the power of the sun for christ sake.

Quote - The problem with trying to save a control prop is that the dependency is actually part of the figure itself. At the very least, you'd have to create INJ poses to inject the dependencies into the character, to go along with the prop.

This is something I'm really interested in, could you show us a quick tut?

Bagginsbill pointed out in another thread that material settings can be animated so DP can be used to adjust materials from a control prop.  So the question is what would you like to control with a single dial?

Basically, since the dependency code is stored in the dependent parameter itself (within the figure, not the prop), you could either create INJ poses, or save the figure with the control prop to the library so that they are both loaded at once. I haven't tried this, so I'm not sure if Poser will save it properly, or if you'd need to hand edit the CR2 afterward to fix the DP code.

The simplest example I can think of is this:

The control prop is a mug on your desk. The body part you want it to control is your left elbow.
Your goal is to make it so that when you rotate the mug, your elbow bends.

When you create a dependent parameter in Poser, even though you start with the mug's yRotate dial, what you're actually doing is implanting a microchip in your elbow, which watches the mug and detects when it is rotated, and by how much, and then causes your elbow to bend as a result.

If you smash the mug and get another identical one, the microchip will probably still work.

If you die and your identical twin walks in and sits down at your desk, no matter how much he turns the mug, his elbow won't bend as a result.

If, however, you leave behind a syringe with an identical microchip, and a note on how to use it, your twin can inject himself with the chip and his elbow will bend when he turns the mug.

I looked around for tutorials on creating INJ poses, and they all seem to require one of the various utilities for sale here or at DAZ. Nothing wrong with that, but that means you'll have to decide which one to buy for yourself (I personally don't have any use for INJ poses, so I don't have any of the utilities myself). The tutorials themselves look quite good, and the utilities are inexpensive, so I doubt you'll run into any hurdles there.

Also, ditto on giving BB access to the underlying RSL - or better yet, make it accessible to all :)

Dependant parameters is an interface to do ERC controls without the editing of the cr2 that was needed in earlier versions.

You can do inj poses by hand, there should be some tutorials on that, or search the forum. You would want to save the figure to a new name so the cr2 is available.  Its not difficult , just a little tedious finding all the bits you need to inlude.

 Thank you all for the info.  I'll look into INJ poses when I have more time.

Is there a step by step description on how to make joint controlled morphs with the Dependent Parameters function? Vestmann's explanation clarified some things for me, but the method leads to the creation of a new "Master Dial." I don't want a new dial. I want my joint controlled morphs to be located in the figure's joint rotation dial.

 You can add new controls for existing dials by clicking the little white arrow next to the dial and click Edit Dependencies.  Is that what you mean?

That's probably what I need. Thanks.

I'll make a partial body morph and try it now that I have colorcurvature's new script for posed exports from Poser.

Hi Paloth,

i hope it will work out well for you.

Regarding the Master Dial, this is a good question. I can't recall what I did when I made the JCM for the cloth. Its possible that it involved a Master. Can maybe the bending dial itself be used as a master?

 Yes that shouldn't be a problem if I understand you guys correctly.  You can edit the dependencies of a bend dial on a figure to include any controls/morphs on a conformed clothing figure.

Ah, well that would be even more advanced I guess. I think Paloth was referring to the bend + morph dial on the cloth item itself. To chain them, without needing an artificial master dial. Does the teaching still work if executed on a bend dial, do you know?

 Yes it shouldn't be a problem to add it to a bend dial on a clothing figure.  I don't know, however, if it will work once it's controlled by the figure it's conformed to.   Maybe Paloth will let us know...

I'm not making clothing at this point.  I'm rigging an original figure and using joint controlled morphs to correct the distortions of extreme bends and to add appropriate muscle and bone deformations. I need my JCMs to be linked to the appropriate body part rotation dials. I've been doing this in Daz Studio by using Morph Loader Pro and the Property Editor. When you choose to "freeze ERC" you can select the controlling dial from a list. I have a "collar up" JCM linked to the z rotation of the collar, and "arm down" JCMs linked to the shoulder rotations, for example.

I assume I'll be able to do something similar in Poser, preferably without having to hack the cr2. I haven't tried it yet because I need to sculpt another morph first.

**Hi Paloth,
i just tried it and it worked fine for me.
What I did was:
Dial bend of collar to 45°, JCM unapplied
Click the bend, and select "Edit dependencies".
Start Teaching
Apply JCM
Dial bend back to 0°
JCM was auto-applied to 0, so I thought fine, and clicked stop teaching.
Stop Teaching.

Now I have the JCM auto applied.  It works better than expected :o**

edit: sorry for bold font, no idea how this happend.

Thanks, colorcurvature. I look forward to trying this in Poser. 

Hey all, am I unapproachable or something?  I am totally available to answer questions on this, my area of expertise.

If you are going to slave your dependancies from a prop, than you're going to need an injection pose for the figure.  There's no reason you need to have a prop though, you can pick an arbitrary body part and load that up custom dials, save that character, and just use that as your base figure and the info will always be there.

PoseMagicPro Gen 4 works just as OP described and beyond.  Starter Poses and then individual controls beyond there.  The beauty of PMPG4 is that you can continue to customize PoseMagicProp by creating master/slave relationships on the prop itself.  For example, I can teach a new dial a starter pose, tweak that on PoseMagic, everything done on this prop because it's so complete and thorough that you will never need to change the PMPG4 Injection Pose.  Just Save the prop!

Making the injection pose is currently an  absolute bitch kitten.  Especially if you're kinda anal like me and want the injection pose to be clean of all non-functional information.  There's a japanese cr2 editor that kind of helps but leaves some stuff behind that you've got to manually delete from the pz2.

It took me a couple of weeks of unemployment to get PMPG4 up and running.

I'll be happy to answer any questions about the process.

I think this thread was referring to Poser8's built-in ERC teaching features.
What is PoseMagicPro?

Someone mentioned PoseMagic because it is based entirely on Built-in  ERC teaching features.  It does exactly what OP describes in OP's first post.

Hi Vestmann,

I am wondering how is it possible to tell the teaching tool that for 0°-60° it has to apply JCM #1 and for 60°-80° it has to apply a JCM #2 also, having 0,000 at 60° and 1,000 at 80°?

Because these valueAddDelta sounds like it a linear function, I wonder how to build a setting for JCM #2. I have a mild idea of an idea that with an additional valueParameter plus limits it might be possible, but I guess, better ask first.

Thanks a ton.
Col

Couldn't you just teach it twice, once for 0-60 and then again seperately for 60-80???

DP can be linear but it also has a curve function editor too, so you can ramp up or out of the morph.

Oh... curve editor... hm.... never tried that out. Will do. Thanks for the hint.