In the readme for a new character that I purchased which is based on one of the DAZ figures it says...

"It is not necessary for you to inject the Morphs++ before loading this figure; however, those morphs must be installed in the SAME runtime as the program that you use to load them."

A little confused about what that means. I have my morphs++ installed in the runtime for the original DAZ figure. I want to install the new character that I purchased in a separate runtime if possible.

So, the question is ... can I do that as long as I have both of those runtimes open or does that present problems?

Thanks in advance for your advice. I'm new to using morphs++ and trying to understand how to use them. Any tips about using morphs++ would be appreciated.

Dkal 

I'm not sure what that means - even when the Morphs++ had to go in the application folder (Poser 6 and earlier) characters didn't, so it doesn't really make sense unless there's a custom morph included as well as dial settings for Morphs++. You certainly need to have the Runtime with the Morphs++ as an active library, but it should be safe to place the character in a different Runtime (I'd create a brand new one, place the character in that, and make sure it works: if it doesn't you can then simply delete everything in the new Runtime and try installing to the same folder as Morphs++; if it does you can merge the new Runtime with the one you want the character in).

Thanks, RHaseltine.

I'm not sure either. To me, it sounds like the morphs in morphs++ would just have to be loaded into the original DAZ figure that the character is based upon. AND if they weren't loaded and the new character automatically used them then I guess the custom morphs created for that character would not get loaded.

I'm still confused about this. Besides this new character, I also recently purchased "Old Man" from Mec4D. The promo images looked great. The old man's face looked very different from M4's face. But when I load the Old Man character Michael's face doesn't appear to look much different other than it is using the Old Man texture.

Was thinking that maybe I needed to have the morphs++ installed in the Old Man's runtime too. Don't know. Tried to contact the owner of Mec4D but haven't heard back from her.

I'll try your suggestions. Thank you very much.

Dkal

The character can be placed anywhere.  It is your base model that should have the morphs installed first before injecting character morphs.

Thanks, hborre.

So do I load ALL of the morphs++ into the base model? You know, do I do the "full" injection?

Would it make sense to ALWAYS just inject ALL of the morphs++ into the base characters? Are there any reasons not to do that?

For example, I have morph injections for "base," "elite," and "morphs++" in the runtime for M4. Very confused as to when I should use which ones or if I should just inject everything so that all of the morphs would be available to me when I find I might need one or two of them.

Sorry if this seems like a newbie question. Guess it is. :-)

Dkal

Quote - Are there any reasons not to do that?

The figure gets quite large.  If you have plenty of system resources, then it may be easier to just inject all.  If you want to keep the size reasonable, you can just inject what you intend to use.

Klebnor

It does depend on the product. V4 originally had all the morphs in the CR2, so characters made for that version didn't actually inject anything (though annoyingly people still labelled the poses as INJ poses). M4's morphs have always been separate, so character poses for him should load the morphs, but there's no harm in injecting all of the required morph sets and then applying the pose to create the character.

As stated, the model file does get larger with each loaded morph package.  I keep a morph copy of each model I use in my library.  This is an easy solution when deciding which character to use for any particular scene.  However, there are instances when you know exactly which particular morph is suitable, so you only load the necessary files to alleviate the overall file size of your scene.

Okay, thank you all for your advice. I'm starting to get the picture.

So it's better to avoid larger model files full of unnecessary morphs because it's taxing on the computer's RAM when Poser renders the file. Did I get that right? Larger-sized models would slow down the rendering process compared with smaller-sized model files.

I don't believe that you're all talking about being concerned about larger file sizes because they use more disk storage space, right?

hborre, I'm trying to better understand what you meant when you said that you keep a "morph copy" of each model." It sounds as if you are adding multiple figures to the figure library, each with different sets of morphs. It would be great if you could give me a practical example of how and why you would do that.

Much appreciated everybody!

Thanks again,
Dkal 

That is absolutely true, I do generate multiple copies with different morph set to keep down the file size per model.  It is not necessary to load all morphs if you are only going to use a fraction of what is available.  For example, I have a morph++ loaded V4 model existing in my library, but I also have a separate S4 morph loaded V4 model.  Again, I keep the file size overhead manageable.  This will also keep the scene file size smaller if the models aren't too weighty.  Ideally, if I need to add other morph files, I could individually pick and chose the ones I want, and spend less time loading those.

Word of caution though,  I have seen issues with trying to load all the morph packages into one model.  At best, I've been able to load 3 separate morph packs, but anything else beyond that.  I imagine that all the morph channels become occupied and will not allow any addition set to be loaded in.

Ah! There must be an upwards limit to the number of morph channels. Wonder what it is? I guess Smith Micro isn't saying. :-)

So, in your example, hborre, the "S4 morph loaded V4 model" would have started with the most basic V4 model, right? You'd use a factory version of V4 before adding Steph. Is that right? And then, as you say, you could always add other individual morphs later.

That's really good to know. I already blew it then in the case of one M4 character. I started with an basic M4, added all of the morphs, and then added the add-on character, Muchacho by Mec4D. I guess that doesn't make much sense, eh?

But then I'm confused again because some of the add-on characters say that they require morphs++ so then wouldn't I have to have morphs++ loaded into a basic DAZ figure before adding the add-on character? This is actually what led to my original question in this thread so I'm obviously still not understanding it all.

Thanks again, hoborre.Dkal

hborre, one issue that I'm having is that I bought Old Man for M4 from Mec4D. The promo images show the Old Man with a very different looking face than the factory M4 face.

When I add the Old Man to M4 it still looks like Michael's face. The only thing that's changed is the Old Man texture. I was assuming, maybe incorrectly, that when I applied the Old Man to my M4 that the structure of the face would automatically change.

Maybe that's not how it's supposed to work? Maybe I'm supposed to dial it in. I guess that might be it, eh?

Quote - Word of caution though,  I have seen issues with trying to load all the morph packages into one model.  At best, I've been able to load 3 separate morph packs, but anything else beyond that.  I imagine that all the morph channels become occupied and will not allow any addition set to be loaded in.

Actually that isn't quite right. There is a limited number of blank channels for use by custom morphs, but the situation there is worse as a given morph uses a specific channel so you can't load two custom morphs that want to use the same channel (without file-editing) even if all the other channels are free. However, the whole point of the ExP system is that it dynamically adds new channels at need, and while theer may well be a limit I believe the RDNA MicroCosm has more channels than a fully loaded V4 so I don't think there's any danger of hitting the limit with her (though actually having data in all those channels may well tax your system, especially in the 32 bit versions of Poser).

dkal, where morph++ is definitely required for other characters, yes, it does need to be loaded first. 

Now, all morph injection do not work the same way.  A fair majority will change the model mesh once you double click on the character injection icon. However, others will simply load a morph dial into the Properties/Parameter palette where you will need to set the dial to 1 to transform your model.  I would imagine this is how Mec4D has arranged the injection to work.  In this instance, you can dial up or down the old man intensity on the model, or include varying degrees of other morphs to completely change the features entirely.  IIRC, the morph++ package for both V4 & M4 have already built in characters to change their overall appearances.  You just need to find their dials and set those to 1.

Was like magic! No need to dial anything in.

Thanks again!
Dkal

Quote - Word of caution though,  I have seen issues with trying to load all the morph packages into one model.  At best, I've been able to load 3 separate morph packs, but anything else beyond that.  I imagine that all the morph channels become occupied and will not allow any addition set to be loaded in.

I have a V4.2 CR2 that I use a base when I'm making a new character that has everything loaded: Morphs++, Aiko4, Girl4, Creatures, She-Freak, Stephanie 4, and Muscles.  It's obviously a memory hog and I'd never use it as is for a project.  Once I have the look I want, I either create a full body morph to load in a base V4, or delete all the morphs I don't use if conforming clothing will be used on the character, or some combination thereof.

Wow, that seems like an extremely useful tip, Keith. I'm going to try that!

Are you manually deleting all of the unused morphs by editing them or? Just wondering because this was mentioned earlier and I've never tried doing that yet.

Thanks,
Dkal

Hunh, found this thread again by accident and didn't realize I had missed a question.  Anyway, here's Keith's Basic Character Creation Method for good or ill.  Note I'm running Poser Pro 2010, as some of this won't work (or will require some extra steps) if you don't have a Load Full Body Morph option.

First, I have several "base" figures sitting in my directory.  There's the run of the mill Vic4.2.  I also have a "Full Vic4.2" with all the "standard" morph packs already injected (that is, the ones supplied by DAZ that use an ExP to create the channels).  I have a "Head Only Vic4.2" that only has the head morphs loaded.  And then I have a "Character Base Vic4.2" that has the expression morphs, body morphforms (the ones that you can use to bend the figure and such), and some other useful morphs such as the armpit fixes.

The reason I have so many is to set up a standard workflow.  What I'll do is use the Full Vic4.2 to fool around and get the general body shape I want.  If the character isn't going to be wearing conforming clothing (so either dynamic clothing, or naked/second skin), I'll export the body as an obj, then use the Load Full Body Morph command to load it into my Character Base Vic4.2, et voila.  Fully morphed character with the set of (what I consider) necessary additional morphs.  If other morphs are necessary, say some muscle morphs to flex the biceps or whatever, I'll load them as well, and I'm done.

If the character is going to be wearing conforming clothing, the workflow is different. 

Usually I load up the Head Only Vic4.2 and create the character's face.  Once that's done, I could either export only the head as an obj, or again export a full-body obj.  I've started exporting full bodies because head-only creates problems if the morph has affected the eyes in some manner (size and/or position), and it's a pain in the ass to fix.

Since I have know what the body is going to look like (because I've usually experimented with the Full Vic4.2 beforehand, or otherwise know what I need based on what morphs are available in the costume that's going to be used), I take the Character Base 4.2, again Load Full Body Morph to load the face I've created, and then load only the individual morphs that I need.   To give an example I'm working on right now, from the Morphs++ list I loaded the NailsLong, WaistWidth, BicepsFlex, Definition and some of the breast morphs individually.

The main thing is figuring out which morphs actually matter.  If a character is wearing a fairly loose-fitting outfit that covers a lot of the body, many of those morphs regarding breast shape, detailed shape of the belly, muscle definition and the like are a waste of time (nipple morphs, for instance).

If the same character has to appear in more revealing clothing, I'll create another CR2 with only the additional morphs I need.  If the character is pretty much nude, or doesn't have to worry about conforming clothing morphs, I'll create a third CR2 with a full body morph and get rid of almost everything else.

The end result is a CR2 that only has the morphs I need, which keeps the size down dramatically.  My Full Vic4.2 is 200MB.  My typical characters, including clothing and hair (which varies in size dramatically) might be less than 40MB.

This means that, if I'm doing a character who appears in more than one image, I will likely have multiple CR2s for that one character with different morphs loaded.  I do this because drive space is cheap, so I don't really care how much space it takes up there.  Memory for rendering, however, is different, so I use the version of the character which optimizes memory use to get what I need for that image.

Wow! Surprised you rekindled that message thread, Keith.

Thanks for the great description of your workflow. I'm going to print out your message and read it carefully tomorrow and let you know if I have any questions. Right now I have to get out the door for the night.

Regards and thanks again,
dkal

Quote - The character can be placed anywhere.  It is your base model that should have the morphs installed first before injecting character morphs.

Yep. That is what was meant.

The figure morphs++ package from Daz, needs to be installed in the same Runtime as the base figure IE: V4.

The character morph that you purchased can be put into any Runtime you want, if you use external runtimes.

The statement says you do not have to inject the figure morphs (Morph ++ package) into the figure before injecting the character morph that you bought.  Just load the base figure without the morphs and inject the character morphs. So long as you have the base figure and it's required morph package in the same Runtime, the character morphs will inject.

Hope that makes sense.