Have an issue with the Navel Gone morph in M3 distorting the texture used, it creates a giant spherization effect in the texture around the navel.

I've tried everything, re-texturing, starting completely from scratch, etc - not sure what to do about this.

Also this morph seems to just create a giant bump where the navel was, which I want completely unnoticeable (going for non-human character).

Are there any alternatives/fixes to this (Other than editing the M3 Obj myself)?

Use the morphing tool to smooth area.

Yes, forgot to mention, I also tried this smoothing idea, but unfortunately the result looks like a giant pile of ass.

The navel turns into a very small positive bump which sticks out, and the area is still kind of messed up.

The morphing tool does require some degree of motor skills along with the proper settings for radius, magnitude and orientation.

Another option is to export abdomen as morph target, smooth it in application of your choice and bring back in as morph to use instead of "NavelGone"

Motor skills, huh? 

Thanks for the subtle insult!

Maybe you need reinstall of your M3 figure, I do not see problem you describe when I just try on M3 SR1

Got it - I think the word you were looking for is fine-tuning, lol.

Motor skills implies basic things like... writing with a pen.

Interesting, I may need to try that - but mine is more of a texturing issue than a geometry one.

It doesn't cause any issues for you with a texture loaded?

Morphs only propagates in straight line so there is distortion you can see by applying tile node.  for the simple test, I am using spots healing brush on a human skin texture.

 I have only made the small image, but you can click to make it slightly larger.

When you're doing a morph that drastic it's going to distort the UVmap unless you very carefully morph to match the UV.  Best to do your morph over with a checker pattern on it just as Medzinatar showed.

Ok, I'm not really sure exactly what you're saying, forgive me.

Is there any solution for this?  You said remove the subtleties of shading - is there any way to go about this in poser?

He's talking about modifying the texture map to remove any color change at the navel, as many textures will have.

For a solution completely internal to Poser,  I suppose you could use some of the 3D shader nodes, like Cellular or Clouds to represent the non-human skin.

I am not so inclined and just bring in the texture from outside.

Just keep in mind that if the UVmap is distorted, whatever procedural texture you have Poser draw across that area will be distorted too.

This is very handy in case of importing 3DS or older LWO that do not support UV.

Yeah I'm not too fond of procedurals.

I guess I'll see what I can do with custom morph targets, thanks guys.