I have found that the two programs I do have for this (C4d and Hexagon) are a complete pita.  

I have looked into Zbrush because it seems that is what most people are using.  But after just purchasing the new photoshop and pp2012, that is going to have to wait a little while.

So I am wondering if I can get some suggestions on lower cost modeling programs that work WELL for creating morphs for V4 and M4.  Morphs of course that will import into Poser.

They don't have to be free but below the $100 mark is preferable.  Free is also sexy - so if there is a free one that doesn't involve circus type hoop jumping in order to create morphs, I'd love to hear about that as well.

Thanks in advance.

For morphing Hex is very good (and now free) and Silo is also good. Blender can also do nice morphs. Anything that has soft selections (and all three do, but Blender calls it's soft selection "Proportional editing". And then there's always Poser's morph tool ;). Sculptris can be used also. And Blender has a sculpting feature.

Of all the above, Silo is the only one that's not free.

Wings would not be good for this since the last time I used the magnet tool anyway, it subdivides the parts being sculpted, sort of like Zbrush and Sculptris do when sculpting. I think you can turn that off in those programs tho, but not in Wings.

Laurie

I admit - I love Hex and would continue to work with that if it didn't have the problems it has.  Crashing, normals reversing etc.  I just want a simple work flow.  Vilters wrote an entire tutorial for me to get morphs from Hex into Poser and it's great.  But the process is a headache.  Especially since the morphs I want to create currently are for both feet and I have to do a full body morph just to get them.

Maybe that will be the same in other programs too.  Right now I just want to try and see if something else suits me better.  

Silo has a 30 day demo - full featured - that is awesome.  So I am going to try that and Blender the next few days and see which one meshes well with me.

I know I should really just be teaching myself to do everything in C4d, but that program is just so not user friendly for me.  I keep saying I will learn, and I suppose when I have 6 months to devote to just learning, I will.

Thanks for the response Laurie.

ETA

Idiot clause:  I also discovered recently that I installed C4d to the wrong place.  X86.  Sooo I also need to uninstall and reinstall before using it.  Which is a pita too.

I knew NOTHING of Hexagon 3 months ago.
I did all my modeling in anim8or before.

Last week I posted my Hexagon to Poser Tutorial in the Hexagon forum.

I took the time to look at most tutorials on tube you :-)
Read the manual on one screen, while the app was open on the other.
Tried with lots of errors, gradually building confidence.
Now I feel pretty confident in Hex, as it does what I want it to do.

And I wrote the tutorial as:

1. Hex is free.
2. Learning Hex was relatively easy. It just takes some of your time, but learning any 3D app will.
3. Hex makes nice morphs for any figure.
4. Hex makes nice morphs, that do not increase file size if you follow my tutorial.
5. PoserPro2012 SR3, can import full body morphs, and now you can delete them fully or partial,
   leaving with the dial that controls just the groups you need for your morph.

Personally, I feel PoserPro2012SR3 and Hexagon are a perfect combination for morphs.

Blender seems good, but would require months of study, not weeks.

Anyhow,

This or that application?
It takes time.
It takes a lot of study in the beginning. Do not give up easy.
It takes making errors for a week or 2-3-4. :-) => Any 3D app will.

Some apps are better, some are **** well, they steal your money.

Zbrush would take years to learn, is above my hobby budget, so completely excluded.

LaurieA is right. There are three tabs showing when you first open Silo: Mod, Sel, UV.  Click the Sel tab and click "Soft Selection". Be sure to give that a try during the free period.

My dear, we X-posted.

3D apps and Poser.

Poser has 2 ways to load morphs:

Group by group.
Or as a full body morph.

Wings, Hex, Silo, Blender or Zbrush.. none of them can change that.

Group by group.
You will have to export each group seperadly.
Rebuild shins, feet and toes in your 3D App into one mesh again.
Morph => ha-ha-ha- seems to be the easy part.

Export the morphed groups group by group again.

Load the morphs group by group back into Poser again.
And then if you want your morph.
You will have to dial it in each and every group seperadly..
Or start making dependencies.
Without mistakes, you are busy for a day or 2.

See the long workflow??? And lots of possibilities to have mistakes or failures.

Or? use my workflow.
Load the figure object file with "merge groups selected".
Morph your shins, feet and toes.
Export from Hexagon, go trought uvmapper free to get the groups and uv data back.
Import as full body morph in Poser.
Goto figure body actor and delete the full body morph.
In the popup menu:
Unselect the morphed groups you want to keep.
Both, shins, both feet, and both toes. And click OK.
Done.

One dial in the figure body actor that controls your morphed shins-feet-toes.

it does not come more easy than this...
In any 3D application.

best regards, Tony

Yea, vilters is right unfortunately. No matter what program you use to do the morphs, the process on getting them into Poser is the same.

Laurie

Edited my above post to add.

If you morph group by group over multiple groups.
You will have to "dial in" your moprh in each and every group seperadly if you want it.
Or you have to start making dependensies.

In my workflow:
You have one body actor dial: That controls the whole morph over all groups automatically.
No extra work.

And with the new SR3 you can delete all empty dials automatically in one go.
Just unselect the dials you want to keep.
But I explained all that before.

happy Posering

Or????
As LaurieA said

The morphbrush inside Poser.
(has been improved in SR3)

Again, takes some time to become confident with it, but the results are good.
Happy Posering

The morph brush is nice in the new version.  But I see that more as touching up.

So what you guys are telling me is that there is no "make morph" button?  /sadface

lol.  Well I'm going to try these other two and just see if they might feel more intuitive for me.  If not, back to Hex I go.  

I went and made myself some homemade guacamole to ease the pain of having to read through manuals and stuff.  My Grandpa always called manuals the "Idiot Guides".  Heh.

No "make morph" button yet. LOL. Hopefully one of these days they'll make it easier. Maybe Poser 15 ;).

Laurie

By PP2020 you"ll probably connect a 3D scanner into Poser and click = GO!

That would be something :-)

I fear, whatever 3D app you choose.
The main problem will stay the same.
Only the interface and the tools to move the vertices around will change.

I'll chime in to say that I love working and morphing in silo.  I'll have to try vilters method for loading them back into poser as going group by group is a pain and silo messes up the vertes order if you import all the groups together

You"ll find out that once the preparation work is done, is is easy going.

I just rechecked the workflow, and it took me 27 minutes to make a full body morph for a new figure.
I took Posette this time, one I had not yet tested.

Start from the object file that is mostly found in the Geometries folder.
When you are back in Poser with your full body moprh, all existing morphs that where in your cr2 still work also. :-)

Happy Posering.

I use Blacksmith3D morph program a lot. It may be very similar to Poser's own morph tool, but I started with it and just kept going. It's pretty good for rounding cheeks, noses, or chins. I've used it on other Poser body parts, but mostly the face. He developed the thing to work with Poser in a very easy manner from what I can tell. I use Version 4, but I think he has a new version out now.

I did most of my V4 to Frankenstein morph using his software. It's here if you want to see it.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2264064&user_id=1076&np&np

He has some youtube videos to give you an idea what the program will do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej_Y5WxkvFA&list=UU6JvEzj46w5m0B6iIQYqdWQ&index=4&feature=plcp

Quote - .....I went and made myself some homemade guacamole ....

Oh man....and I'm so hungry....

I will add to what Laurie stated... download Sculptris from Pixologic.com.  It is a free program and I used it to make target morphs for my Poser and DAZ figures.  If you go that way, use the chat room and we can get you started making morphs for your figures...Jan

Basically, you export that part you want morphed into Sculptris as an .obj, ensure that you don't add any polys (we can show you how) and save the resulting .obj, then in poser using target morph, load it and a dial will appear for that morph.  Jan

Yes, and then you are again where we started.
One group at a time.

That is not what the OP wanted.
That is something ALL 3D apps can do, and is very time consuming.

Yes, Sculptris is the way to go.

Quote - Basically, you export that part you want morphed into Sculptris as an .obj, ensure that you don't add any polys (we can show you how) and save the resulting .obj, then in poser using target morph, load it and a dial will appear for that morph.  Jan

Thank you for your input.  I am familiar with how morphs are created.  Creating the morph itself is not the problem.  I am just trying to find the easiest workflow for a particular type of project.

Quote -
it does not come more easy than this...
In any 3D application.

best regards, Tony

That's not entirely true. Did you see my tutorial on full body morphs in zbrush?

You don't have to go through all of that.

I don't know what the process is for hex or all those other apps listed, but zbrush makes it very simple, and poser will only add the FBM morphs to the groups that the FBM affects. You can break it up back in poser if you want to. 

Also, zb does not subdivide unless you tell it to. You can sculpt a poser mesh without subdividing. Too many people get into zb and think they have to hit the divide button 20 times before they can sculpt. 

I realize you already stated you can't get zb right now, but the process should be virtually the same for any program. You import the morph as an FBM if it affects more than one body group, and then break it up once you're back in poser. 

The only thing GoZ really does - in any application that it's being used in - is automate the import/export/import process for you, and keeps a temporary cache of each model that you've used GoZ with. (there are a few other technical bits about it, but that is basically all it does).

If poser didn't have GoZ functionality, the process would still be the same - export the mesh and import as an FBM in poser. Which means it shouldn't matter what program you're using to create the morph, as long as that program is capable of retaining your grouping info. 

~Shane

Yes sir, I did see it.
But the OP, nor I,  (and most hobby users) do not have Zbrush.

And YES, the workflow into, and out of close to any other 3D app, would be similar to what I posted.

Well, you can get older versions of ZBrush cheaper. In my opinion the best Morphing app. I'm kind of trapped with Zbrush 2 as I'm on a pre Intel mac, and am not going to switch anytime soon. Don't know too much about the windows OS but it seems that it is updated a lot less frequently, you could probably get ZBrush 3 for about $150.00 (Windows XP SP2/Windows Vista/Windows 7) which is a terrific price. I'm perfectly happy with the functionality of ZB2 and version 3 added a lot of features, including GoZ. Also, I found ZBrush not at all difficult to learn on a basic user level. Read the manual, read some tutorials.

For me, the trick to cracking the Zbrush nut was high speed internet. That opened up a world of free video tutorials. Zbrush is, without a doubt, the best program you can use for creating morphs for Poser.

@ Paloth...

It's funny that you should mention that because for a long time I was completely without the internet at home so I did alot of my learning by trial and error and text documentation. Using digital media without the internet is a strange beast. At the time that an instructor of mine  gave me many of the apps that I still use, that was the case. Kind of like trying to learn how to draw proficiently with your off hand. Now THAT you should try some time.

If I can use Blender, anyone can.

Where can you find a valid copy of zbrush for $150? Do you have any links to reputable software vendors? (E-bay doesn't count, as software from there is always a risk).

Since the OP has already stated she can't get zb right now, I think her best option would be something like Blacksmith3D. It has a $20/mo. subscription fee if you dont want to or cant buy full price up front. 

~Shane

Eeeek, Guess I shouldn't mention ZBrush around THIS guy anymore, thats twice you've torn me a new one for talking about it. Maybe you have a point, although I think people can arrive at their own choices. It was an observation with the word Probably in it. I've noticed that you've always got the answer though, which is comforting. You Know, I was actually looking at Blacksmith... looks nice. I wonder, when you finally reach the retail cost of the app in rental dollars, do you finally get to own it? It's a Little vague at the web site.

Nanette probably has a point about Blender, I'm envious of anyone who's gotten to the stage of being comfortable with it.

Quote - Eeeek, Guess I shouldn't mention ZBrush around THIS guy anymore, thats twice you've torn me a new one for talking about it. Maybe you have a point, although I think people can arrive at their own choices. It was an observation with the word Probably in it. I've noticed that you've always got the answer though, which is comforting. You Know, I was actually looking at Blacksmith... looks nice. I wonder, when you finally reach the retail cost of the app in rental dollars, do you finally get to own it? It's a Little vague at the web site.

Nanette probably has a point about Blender, I'm envious of anyone who's gotten to the stage of being comfortable with it.

lol sorry. Don't mean to come across that way, and I never have all the answers. 

I've never used blacksmith so I don't have an answer for that. <--see?

but you can probably e-mail its creator and ask, if you're interested in it. It's pretty much designed for poser/ds, as I understand it, and seems a lot of people use it.

~Shane

Attached Link: Pointing arrow

   I am new to the world of morphing, you will probably see my first contribution soon in the freestuff section (I don't know if Renderosity will accept my work on M4 pelvic tilt morphs, dont't have any new from two days).

I faced the same problem as jjrolandL. However, I finally stay with Poser to make my morphs because of the capabilities of its morphing tools  and related possibilities (Magnet, morph brush, export and import function of obj files, master dials, dynamic clothing, weight mapping, etc ). These tools are not perfect but still quite powerfull (I don't know about ZBrush). What is lacking to Poser to help with morphing ? For me the main limit is the lack of precise control of the X, Y and Z coordinates. Morphing the tip of my pointing arrow was difficult because of that. See the link above:

I made the suggestion to Smith Micro to have three dials to control the position of coordinates. What other realistic suggestions do you have? Don't ask for all capabilities of 3D modelling application or asked to 3D application to have all the capabilities of Poser.

Allstereo       

After reading the workflow required to do it in Hexagon, I will stick to Blender for creating morphs. Seems a lot easier for me anyway. Hexagon is installed on a few of my systems, but I rarely use it.

There are a few ways of doing it in Blender depending on how the mesh was distributed. If it is a welded or grouped mesh, etc.

Blender is a powerful program that continues to improve. If it does not do something that you want it to do you can always ask one of the developers to add it to it. If enough people requested it, it will end up in there.

Quote - Where can you find a valid copy of zbrush for $150? Do you have any links to reputable software vendors? (E-bay doesn't count, as software from there is always a risk).

Since the OP has already stated she can't get zb right now, I think her best option would be something like Blacksmith3D. It has a $20/mo. subscription fee if you dont want to or cant buy full price up front. ~Shane

I will look into older versions of Zbrush.  that is a great idea I didn't think of.  I also didn't know that you could just pay a monthly price for blacksmith so I may try that as well.  I got an ad for Blacksmith the other day and I thought that really looked intriguing.

Thanks for all your input!

WARNING !!!!!!!!

The Poser GoZ plugin only works with the new versions of Zbrush !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read the read me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not spend money on incompatable versions.

Quote - [I will look into older versions of Zbrush.  that is a great idea I didn't think of.  

Zbrush has lifetime upgrades so I doubt getting an older version of software will be legitimate. The only way it would be legitimate if the seller is doing a license transfer with you, that would allow you to upgrade.

Yeah, I was a bit worried about that too.
Good to point it out.

REMARK !!

My first Hexagon tuturial can look complicated.
2 Reasons for that;

1. It has some fail safe features build in.
2. It builds a new character from an existing object file WITHOUT increasing file size.

Expext 2 more tutorials.

Full body morphs for Poser using Hexagon
Single group moprhs for Poser using Hexagon

Both are simpler :-)

Quote - > Quote - [I will look into older versions of Zbrush.  that is a great idea I didn't think of.  

Zbrush has lifetime upgrades so I doubt getting an older version of software will be legitimate. The only way it would be legitimate if the seller is doing a license transfer with you, that would allow you to upgrade.

I did look into that today and I wasn't able to find any older versions anyway.  This Friday I will find out what the upcoming budget looks like, in the mean time I am viewing Blacksmith tutorials and trying out the demo.

I really do love Hexagon, it is very intuitive for me BUT the lack of developer support for it leaves me doubt for the future.  I'm an OCD kind of person and once I get familiar with doing things one way it is hard for me to switch so I am attempting to get a clear workflow established now.  Already I have spent years in this not really having one and I believe I have wasted a great amount of time due to that.

I actually really like Cararra too.  But I just don't trust Daz anymore at all to support their own products.

Quote - WARNING !!!!!!!!

The Poser GoZ plugin only works with the new versions of Zbrush !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read the read me !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do not spend money on incompatable versions.

No worries on that here.  I am going to be using PML.  :) yay for that success.

Quote - REMARK !!

My first Hexagon tuturial can look complicated.
2 Reasons for that;

1. It has some fail safe features build in.
2. It builds a new character from an existing object file WITHOUT increasing file size.

Expext 2 more tutorials.

Full body morphs for Poser using Hexagon
Single group moprhs for Poser using Hexagon

Both are simpler :-)

The tutorial is terrific IMO.  You can follow it from start to finish with barely any knowledge at all.  That is something that is seriously lacking in many tutorials, they assume that you know too much.

Even if the person following it is already familiar with some steps, it is good to learn other ways to do things, just to be familiar with the ins and outs.

I very much appreciate having a FAIL SAFE way to get it done when needed and that is exactly what this provides.

V4 was modeled in Modo.

I am a huge fan of zBrush ,zBrush can make displacment maps also.

Umm, Don't know if this thread is still active... But, just a couple of observations. so I installed the latest version of Hexagon last night and started playing around with it. Crashed about 15 minutes into using it. I had read that Hexagon had some serious stability problems and I would really like to learn how to use it (seems to be a pretty fully featured modeler). Should I waste my time with this app? I'm wondering how veteran Hex users feel on this subject.

Just an aside about Hexagon, seems like Daz REALLY dropped the ball with this one... Which is peculiar because the latest version of Carrara is rock solid. Speaking of Carrara... I really like this application but I've never used it for morphing figures. It's more like the Swiss Army Knife of Scene, Set, and Environment creation with a hefty modeler built in. Very nice lighting and materials, too. Additionally the latest version has the Bullet Physics engine. From what I understand, Daz is devoting a lot of attention to it so I'm very comfortable with my investment. C3DE magazine and Carraracafe are also very nice user related resources.

Blender is also a great application but I haven't devoted much time with it... it's on my high priority need to do list. It's simply a matter of conquering my impatience with some of it's idiosyncracies.

In terms of morphing my workflow consists of ZBrush 2 and Wings3D ( Zbrush for the more free-hand organic work and Wings for the vertices level editing). I've developed a high comfort level with this process but I continue to look around for alternate techniques. Hence the interest in Hex, Silo, Blacksmith, etc.

Finally, apologies if I inadvertently led you on a wild goose chase with Zbrush, jjroland... It's definitely for the best if you have a valid license for the application in terms of upgrading.

Some MAC users are reporting Hexagon crashes.

I am on Windows 7 with all my PC's and Hexagon has been as solid as...
Well, I only got ONE crash the very first time I opened it some months ago.

As solid as rock ever since.
And I use Hexagon each and every day now.

SM should buy it, and intergrate it in Poser.
That would be Poser heaven :-)

In any case, someone should invest in Hex rather than let it flounder. it does seem to be very Poser friendly in terms of content creation (Clothes, Hair). Carrara is very Poser friendly, too. More so in a one way direction. Poser does need it's own internal modeling system, I think it's Poser's one weakness.