Hi!

 I was wondering if there's a tool for Poser that allows you to save out poses(and animations) and allows you to select which morphs to include in your pose. For example, in my animation I'm only using the expression morphs, but when I save my animation, it includes the shaping morphs as well... so when I load my animation onto another character, it zeroes out the shaping morphs, which I don't want.

 I'm distributing this animation to others as well, and it will fail testing if it affects the shaping morphs.

 "So save the animation without morphs and then just text edit only the morphs you want into the .pz2!" That's what I usually do, but this is the largest animation I've done, at 1800 frames, and it won't open up in my usual text editor or .cr2 editor, they run out of memory. (And my computer is fairly powerful).

 What can I do? I've hit a bit of a brick wall here. :(

 Any help would be much appreciated, thanks!

 I think I figured it out.

 I got Morph Manager from here: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dlutility.html

 I have to copy over each morph one at a time, (I wish I could shift and ctrl+select), but at least it should work. :) Thanks to the Morph Manager author ** Paul "Mr. X" Mason**!

Hmm maybe not, Morph Manager doubles the file size for some reason, to 200mb :(.

How have you done this in the past?  If you are the same person I THINK you are, I don't recall any of your commercial animations overwriting the facial and body morphs.  What's different about what you're doing now?

Quote - Hmm maybe not, Morph Manager doubles the file size for some reason, to 200mb :(.

MM4 replaces tab stops with spaces, which accounts for the bigger file size. With a cr2, you can load it in Poser and resave it to the Figures palette. This will replace the spaces with tabs. Not sure how to fix it in a pz2.

Quote - How have you done this in the past?  If you are the same person I THINK you are, I don't recall any of your commercial animations overwriting the facial and body morphs.  What's different about what you're doing now?

 Yes I'm who you think I am, lol. I haven't had such a large animation in the past, so I was able to edit the .pz2 in a text editor.

 But anyway, I found a solution. :) The "Cr2 Editor" from the same link above. It opens .pz2s as well (well, takes 5 minutes to load it, lol), and I was able to copy the morphs over, and even easily delete stuff I didn't need like the "refractor" lines and Center of Mass stuff.

 My 100 MB .pz2 is now 30 MB, huzzah!

Quote - I got Morph Manager from here[...] I have to copy over each morph one at a time, (I wish I could shift and ctrl+select)[...]

Morph manager was a great boon to Poser users when it first came out, but it's a bit of an antique these days. It's still probably the one of the easiest ways to strip all the targetGeom channels out of a cr2, to make a BLANK version, or to copy all the morphs from one file to another, en block. But for anything else, poser file editors are more flexible, and give you better control. Most of them have Windows Explorer style Shift+Click/Ctrl+Click selection (cr2 Editor is an exception). "CR2Builder" is free, there are also commercial Poser file editors available from D3D and PhilC, these have more bells and whistles, but personally I use CR2Builder (because it's free, and I'm a tight bastard).

 I bought PhilC's PZ3Editor, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to handle large animations very well. It took about 5 minutes to load a 300 frame animation, so I didn't want to bother with a 1800 frame animation unless it was a last resort.

  $26 seems a bit steep for D3D's one, but maybe I'll give it a try when I can afford it. I'll try the Free Cr2Builder my next animation. Thanks for the links!

Quote - I was wondering if there's a tool for Poser that allows you to save out poses(and animations) and allows you to select which morphs to include in your pose. For example, in my animation I'm only using the expression morphs, but when I save my animation, it includes the shaping morphs as well... so when I load my animation onto another character, it zeroes out the shaping morphs, which I don't want.

For two or three poses files, or perhaps even four or five, deleting channels form the pz2 files is a viable option, though it is prone to user error as it is easy to miss one of the channels that you intended to delete, or to delete one that should be included. To process a lot of pose files, it may be easier, and certainly less prone to error if you use the following method (though this may only work in P7 or below).

Use a poser file editor to create a new version of the figure. You strip all the channels you don't want out of this new figure (eg the head shape morphs). Now in Poser you save the poses using the original figure, then apply them to the new figure and save them again. Because the new figure does not have the head shape morphs, it will not record them, and poses saved from the new figure will not include them (in P7 or below). I don't have P8, but understand that it introduced the ability for a pose file to add new targetGeom channels, which is a wonderful enhancement :thumbupboth:... except in this particular case :sad:. The moral of this tail, always keep your old versions of Poser.

The main advantage of this method is that you only have to do the stripping once, and if you get it right the first time, there is no further possibility of introducing errors by deleting channels that you did not mean to, or by including channels that you should have deleted.

And of course, if you have no need of the head shaping morphs what so ever. You could create the whole animation using the new cr2, and the poses you save will need no intervention to remove morphs.

Quote - $26 seems a bit steep for D3D's one, but maybe I'll give it a try when I can afford it. I'll try the Free Cr2Builder my next animation. Thanks for the links!

I don't have D3D's file editor, but I know he does very excellent stuff, and I bet it's a cracker, and well worth the money! On the other hand, I have no idea if it would load large animations any faster than PhilC's editor.

what I do is use a program that reads a pz2 and strips out any morphs in the control list.  I wrote this years ago to keep animation files from messing with character morphs.

I lost the compiled program but might have the source code.  If I can get it recompiled I will post again.

 Great suggestion on stripping the actual .cr2 of the morphs I don't need, I should've thought of that! I'll use that method next time for sure.

@markschum,

Yes please, please, please, pretty please!

I hope I'm understanding you correctly.

What I do is, while I'm in the process of saving the pose, click on the "Select Subset" button on the save pose dialog.  From there you can check off only the morphs you want to include in the pose.

Quote - I hope I'm understanding you correctly.

What I do is, while I'm in the process of saving the pose, click on the "Select Subset" button on the save pose dialog.  From there you can check off only the morphs you want to include in the pose.

 Nope... I don't see a list of morphs. Just body parts and magnets. You might be thinking of expression face poses?

No.  I'm not thinking of expressions, although you can do the same thing with the head morphs.

In the Select Subset dialog, select only the body parts with the morphs you want to keep and save as a pose.  If you want only certain morphs, apply only those morphs to a default figure and save only those bodyparts as a pose.  That way you can apply that pose onto any figure.

Be sure to check the "Save morphs.....?" option when you're saving the pose to the library.

Not sure how this would work in an animation though.