I ran a forum search for "creating expressions" but found no relevant threads. Yet I'm sure this must have been discussed.

How does one create a facial expression without resetting every morph in the head (other than the ones in the expression) to zero? I made some expressions and saved them as .fc2, but when using them they wiped out character morphs, even the DAZ ones like Utopia, Amazon, Young, etc.

I checked the .fc2 file in a text editor and saw that in addition to the expression morphs, there were many, many additional morphs, all set to zero. Seemed like every morph belonging to Vicky. Even the PBMCC channels, which are used to carry user-created FBMs including custom heads.

I checked the .fc2 files from some purchased expressions and none of these extraneous channels were there. In some freebie expressions, however, they were.

The extra channels can be stripped out with a text editor, but it is tedious because the non-expressions are mixed in with the expressions, so it would be quite tedious to do with each expression. 

So how does one quickly get rid of the non-expression channels in .fc2 files, or avoid including them in the first place?

From the dialog box where you're prompted to specify what name to save an expression, click the "Select Subset" button. Then select the morphs you want to include in the expression.

Wouldn't it be great if that dialog box included a convenient check box titled "Use only expression dials" to save all that clicking of the same checkboxes every time you save an expression?

An alternative would be to group expressions and non-expressions into hierarchies within the Subset dialog, so one could easily check or uncheck all of each group with one click.

As I said, Poser does not segregate expressions and non-expressions. And it can take awhile to recognize which ones are not related to expressions. (Some are obvious from their names, but some are not.)

Unfortunately some people, even a few who sell their stuff, still create character faces by turning dials (including expression dials) and leaving it at that. If everyone would simply go the extra step and make a single morph out of those dials, it would greatly ease the problem.

But even that single morph would still be set to zero in a saved expression if you didn't know to go into the Subset dialog and uncheck it.

[edit] bagginsbill's way is the easiest if you want to save a fc2, which as you have found is just a MOR (dial setting) pose for head morphs.

Ockham has a py script to "Strip zero morphs from PZ2 or FC2 to make a lean file"  on his site:

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/

It's the second script up from the bottom of the page. I have never used the script myself.

Another option would be spawn a morph for the expression. You can then either save the morph in obj format, or use svdl's "SpawnCharacterP6 update" to make an INJ file for the morph. Before saving an expression morph you should turn off any morphs not involved in the expression.