Is there a tutorial for "hand" creating ExP files to inject into V4, rather then spending over $100 on Figure Setup Tools for one simple tool?  Don't worry, I know how to write/copy/edit scripts, I do it all the time in Notepad++, I just can't figure the ExP files out.

...wolfie

What is a ExP file? You talking about morphs?

I looked into this for a while and concluded it was a vast amount of work to do by hand for very little practical value.  I never found automation to do this for free.  Apparently DAZ are happy to make this difficult for outsiders/people not buying their toolset (a bit stupid imo).  If there were automation out there that does this and is free I'd be (very slightly) curious to hear about it.

edit: as to what it is, http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki/doku.php/wiki/user/rbtwhiz/technotes/content/exp/start

Ok you want to be able to inject morphs without using morph channels. I had tried to find info on this when I first started doing my tongue morphs. Rebekah over at Sixus 1 tried to help me but I never could get it to work for me.

Well not quite - the idea is to expand the morph channels in the V4 CR2.  If you look at a V4/M4 CR2 as written by the DAZ installer you'll see that the channels aren't there, but there are readScript entries for all body parts that call tons of other pose files, and these actually add new channels to the figure at loading time.  It's pretty clever stuff that works around undocumented behavior in Poser and all that, but trying to add a new set of morphs by hand to the ones provided by DAZ is just a brutal amount of work.

Hmm, thanks a lot, pjz99, for clarifying this (and sorry for late reply, had to go somewhere for a while).  So, now, it confirms to me that it's not in the V4 cr2 file, but in the body parts.

I knew this was gonna be a difficult process, but what I'm figuring after the difficult process set up for 1 morph (custom head morph), I can use that file to copy other character head morphs.

Of a comment I saw some time ago about the Injection Channels/Daz (or) Community, it's hard to choose which number you're gonna use, 'cause users could want to inject something else (such as teeth deformation) that could possibly call the same number and mix or omit  the current morph.  I do wonder though, maybe I can call a new name under that channel, I did succeed creating a blank V4 that only called those channels (instead of including all V4, Elite, TheGirl4, S4, A4, SheFreak4, Male, and now RebySky channels).  Did that 'cause Daz Studio is limited in how much can be added, and viewed, 'cause I needed to inject Ultra Face Morph2, which has a lot of morphs to dial, to create a custom head morph, and needed the Injection Channels to create the INJ/REM files for the newly spawned morph created.

One step closer, now I have an idea where to look, but I believe it can be done.  If I do succeed and create an ExP file for my character, and find that it'll be too much work to copy/paste that file for another custom head morph, then I won't bother with it anymore lol.

And yes, Daz did make it very difficult for us... on purpose... so that we can't (or will be slow at) create or play with this toy and find no purpose in buying their expensive program (Figure Setup Tools Bundle) for that small purpose.

Business, you know, just like new cars coming that people can't work on but have to support an expensive mechanic to keep them going...

...wolfie

When you say "it's in the body parts", it isn't any change you make to the V4 CR2; what you do is place all the relevant files in the relavant directories, with relevant contents (this is the massive amount of labor to do by hand that I was talking about, it actually wouldn't be that bad if it was all done to the CR2) and then you run the "Update V4/M4" utility, which goes and enumerates all the files present in whichever directories, and creates a number of updated pose files to go and load all that crap for you.  The actual V4 CR2 that was written by the DAZ installer is not changed at all.

You won't be creating a single ExP file, you'll be creating two files for every body part (one for the channels themselves, and one for parameter dial grouping) AND a separate pose file containing the deltas for each morph.  Plus a pose file for the linkParms settings, although possibly you won't care about these.  As complex as you probably think it is, wait until you really dig into it, it's a lot worse than it looks (and it looks bad initially).

The thing is, the process isn't made complex on purpose, it's all done this way to take advantage of unintended behavior in Poser.  The manual process probably couldn't be made a whole lot simpler than it is.  The lack of free tools to automate it and make it less painful though, yeah that's a "business decision".

Hmm, you make me want to give up already lol.  Ever hear of a fool who chooses to go through an extremely difficult process even though he's warned by an experienced person of it's extreme difficulty, then the fool comes back and says, "yep, you're right, too difficult"?  I'm not one of them lol, so I'll leave that alone.

Maybe if I can make enough money from my next character, I can get the program, but I do wish Daz would sell a program that just deals with ExP creation alone without all the other tools, for a cheaper price.  Or maybe we should get a hold of one of the Poser python script gurus and ask if they can do it lol.

Thanks for your replies, pjz99!

...wolfie

///edit to add/// you did make me realize something here though.  I thought when you updated V4, it goes grabbing files online, but I now realize it grabs the new files that are installed in the !Daz V4 folder.

I have to say, if you're doing this for your own personal use, this is probably wayyyy more work than it's worth to you.

Well, It's actually for commercial, but yea, you made me realize how much work it is lol.

I wouldn't advise you to do it by hand, I did it for one of WERTS custom MT's and found it straight forward enough, but I wouldn't try it for an FBM.

For a head morph you only need to create 2 files, 1 for the Channels and 1 for the Groups, but if your doing an FBM or want a Root dial then you need to add 1 more for the ERC, then multiply that by the number of body parts. For a Custom FBM your looking at creating around 190 files, then you have to edit your Delta & ChanVis files so they will load into the new channels.

Quote - I wouldn't advise you to do it by hand, I did it for one of WERTS custom MT's and found it straight forward enough, but I wouldn't try it for an FBM. For a head morph you only need to create 2 files, 1 for the Channels and 1 for the Groups, but if your doing an FBM or want a Root dial then you need to add 1 more for the ERC, then multiply that by the number of body parts. For a Custom FBM your looking at creating around 190 files, then you have to edit your Delta & ChanVis files so they will load into the new channels.

Actually I'll need it for the custom head... and eyes morph.  I agree though, that would be lunitic to do custom FBM morphs lol.

So, tell me, I just need 2 files each, for the head & eyes, which total to 6?  Can you specifically tell me which V4 files to look at for reference?  How would I need to edit my deltas and chanvis?

One other question, I don't see a way to do a "rem" file, to take it back out, is that possible?

...wolfie

For a head morph, look in:

RuntimeLibraries!DAZVictoria 4head (2 files here)
RuntimeLibraries!DAZVictoria 4lEye (2 files here)
RuntimeLibraries!DAZVictoria 4rEye (2 files here)
RuntimeLibraries!DAZVictoria 4DeltasMorphs++ (one file for the deltas/ERC control for each morph/ERC dial)

When you look in those directories you'll see the pattern of file names pretty quickly.  If you do anything with the tongue and inner mouth/teeth you may need to look into additional directories besides.

The DAZ-original REM files for head morphs are a bit sloppy, they don't zero the dial values but just remove the deltas.  This is okay for actual morphs but it leaves the eyes (usually moved by translating them) in wrong positions after the morph is dialed up and the REM pose is then run.

Now that I think more about it there might be something beyond those that tells the DAZ updater exactly what directories to go look in, or it might just enumerate all directories and go by filename, I'm not sure.  There is also stuff in:

RuntimeLibraries!DAZVictoria 4bodyMorphs

but I don't think that's strictly necessary.  I can't think of where else you might have to put information.

Thanks a lot, pjz99!  I'm gonna look into those.  Still debating though, seeing it's not possible (yet) to actually take the channel back out.

For example, my ideal would be to add "Tindra Head" channel name under head and eyes "Moprh | Shapes", with "Tindra Head" channel dial, with the option to REM the whole thing out where you wont' see "Tindra Head" channel name or dial anymore (I used my older character's name, am not giving my new character name out yet, for protection of my idea).

...wolfie

Shrug, that's not something I really let bother me as DAZ does it that way for their own files (not that I distribute morphs too often).  Note you can HIDE the channel, you just can't remove it - that doesn't really matter anyway since the deltas are gone, empty channels have negligible overhead.

Quote - empty channels have negligible overhead.

Yea, there's nothing wrong with empty channels, even channels with a custom name, technically, but you hang around Daz forums long enough you'll hear a bunch of totally rediculous complaints people come up with, and if I don't have a script to rid the name totally, I can guarantee my name will be brought up in these rediculous complaints.  I can just hear it...

"I know it's nothing wrong and does nothing wrong with my machine, but still the name's there and it drives me mad so I have to re-load V4 just to get rid of it"

lol... I just know that will be said...

I'm not too worried about it though.  People there will do anything to create a complaint...

...wolfie

Piss on em, they don't demand that kind of thing from the base product so why should you provide it?  It's like someone asking for conforming clothing to be rigged better than the base figure is (and I've heard that one too, and the answer is the same).

Quote - Piss on em, they don't demand that kind of thing from the base product so why should you provide it?  It's like someone asking for conforming clothing to be rigged better than the base figure is (and I've heard that one too, and the answer is the same).

LOL...!!

Please remember that I've only done this once and it was a couple of months back :P .

In my case I worked on V4, so in the "Libraries!DAZVictoria 4" folder you'll find 66 folders, 132 .pz2 files & one V4ActorList.txt. The 132 .pz2's are created when you run the updater and are overwritten each time you re-run the updater, the .txt is the key file and holds the bodypart numbering.
One of the folders is for the DAZ morph deltas (yours can go anywhere you want), the others are the main part of the EXP system, each of which holds atleast 3 files for every EXP morph pack you've installed.

I only had to work on the head which meant I had to make 2 files, they are '05-Milla_Chnnls.pz2' & '05-Milla_Grps', the '05-' is the bodypart number, I don't think the 'Milla' has a function other than to remind me what morph it's for, the '_Chnnls' & '_Grps' tell the updater which of those 132 .pz2's the info goes into.

05-Milla_Chnnls.pz2

{
version
 {
 number 6
 }
 {
 // This file consists of all channels for the 'head' actor, for the 'Milla_Jovovich' product.
 }

  targetGeom FHMMilla_Jovovich
   {
   name EMPTY-Milla_Jovovich (Head)
   initValue 0
   hidden 1
   forceLimits 1
   min 0
   max 1
   trackingScale 0.01
   keys
    {
    static  0
    k  0  0
    }
   interpStyleLocked 0
   indexes 0
   numbDeltas 0
   deltas
    {
    }
   blendType 0
   }
}

05-Milla_Grps

{
version
 {
 number 6
 }
 {
 // This file consists of all groups for the channels of the 'head' actor, for the 'Milla_Jovovich' product.
 }

   groupNode Morphs | Shapes
    {
    collapsed 1
    groupNode Custom
     {
     collapsed 1
     groupNode Milla_Jovovich
      {
      collapsed 1
      parmNode FHMMilla_Jovovich
      }
     }
    }
}

All I did was copy two of the head files, renamed them and then altered the contents to what you see above.

The Delta & ChanVis files just need thier targetGeom renamed to match the ones in the '_Chnnls' files.

PS made mine with DeltaX15's INJ/REM script in DS, it was updated several months back to make it work in DS3, it's sssllllooooowwwwwwwwwwwww and half the time you think DS has froze but it will get there eventually (takes about 15 minutes for a head morph).

PPS this crap forum code has eaten all of the formatting in those 2 chunks of code

yeah you may want to use 'code' tags before and after to force formatting, if the editor still lets you do that .... oh well evidently it doesn't any more

Hmm, I'm gonna put in a request to revert back from this crappy forum code, or change it for the better... not worst... I hate the way they have it.  Not to mention, it's less friendlier for FireFox.  It don't even open a new window anymore for FireFox to copy/paste when you right click/select, it just takes you to a "you're screwed" page lol.

Thanks a lot, Bejaymac for the script/codes, it made it easier for me :)  I just created some sketchy ones for now, will edit the deltas/chanvis & do some testings.  Hope this works!

...wolfie

Ok, I started the thread in the request forum... about this sloppy text editor.  Need some support guys :)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2818423

...wolfie