What happens is that if you're using a Michael 4, then you import another Michael 4, or any part of him (i.e. head), then save the scene out to the usual pz3, there's a chance he will lose some of his morphs. This also happens if you save him to the figure library when another Michael 4 or any other parts of Michael 4 are parented to him.

This definitely happens on GhostofMacbeths war orc model. When you re-open the scene, he would have completely lost his head morphs. Everyone who's tested this has also confirmed that, including GhostofMacbeth himself. I also noticed this happens on the M4 Lizardian. In that case, he loses both his lizardian morph, as well as his head Morphs++. From some of my other friends, this has happened on some of their other models as well. And it can happen randomly too, it might not appear immediately, but after a few saves.

After doing some testing, i noticed that the dials themselves are never erased, it's only the morphs. So let's say if you used mouthopen and set it to 2.5. When you re-open the lizardian file, he would have lost the mouthopen morph, but the dial is still in there and set to 2.5. The good thing about this, is that you don't lose your morph++ settings, only the morph. So all you gotta do is reinject all of the morphs++ (or the ones in particular you know are missing), and in the case of the lizardian, i had to reinject the lizardian morph as well, and i got my lizard back exactly how i had it when i saved him.

The solutions i found for this so far, the more complicated route is to save the actual body parts as morphs out, but requires you understand how all the saving/importing morphs works. Another solution that hborre mentioned was memorize the dials individually that are getting erased before saving it. An easy solution i found, is that since your dials aren't lost, all you have to do is reinject the morphs that you lost, and you'll have everything back. So if you used a M4, morphs++, muscle morphs, and lizardian morphs, and you notice your character looks messed up when you re-open him, reinject all the morphs++, muscle morphs, lizardian morphs, and any other morphs you applied to him, and you should get him back.

I'm not really sure how to submit tickets, but perhaps someone else can submit one to the people at poser to let them know about this bug.

Anyone else who had this problem, go ahead and reply and share us the info, and maybe we can find an easier solution to it or even a way to prevent it from happening in the first place.

I attached a picture of what can happen to the Lizardian M4 morphs after you re-open a saved file.

Does this only happen with M4? Or is it affecting other figures as well?

~Shane

As far as i can tell, it has only happened so far with two or more michael 4's. I haven't used two V4's in the same scene since the 3.1 update, but if i had to take a wild guess, it also probably happens with her. Maybe someone else can confirm that. I've seen no issue with the horde werewolf, sanctums alpha phenotype models, daz troll, and daz gorilla so far.

Hmm.

If it's only affecting M4, then it seems to me it would be an issue Daz would need to resolve, since it's a Daz figures and not Smith-Micro's figure. Unless its just happening with 3rd party morphs, then it may not even be something Daz could fix, you might have to go to the creator of the morph.

~Shane 

Yeah, they probably won't even care since they put everything into Genesis these days.

https://support.smithmicro.com/app/answers/list

Here is the link for SmithMicro support if you want to open a ticket.  I just opened one, but as AmbientShade mentioned, how much attention will it get if it is only occurring with a 3rd party figure.  However, it could transcend other figures and no one has really noticed.

Yeah submitted a ticket.

It seems to be happening with the morphs related to M4 and morphs++. So far from what i got, it's happened to the GOM warorc model and M4 lizardian model, but on the lizardian model it happens randomly. I'm waiting for my friend to reply on a different site, because he said it's happened on a few other models he's used, all M4. But in his case, he's lost only certain morphs++ like the hand morphs. What makes it difficult, is with the exception of the war orc model, where it happens every time, it's random on other custom morphs, so it's difficult to catch :X

Quote - I'm not really sure how to submit tickets, but perhaps someone else can submit one to the people at poser to let them know about this bug.

Anyone else who had this problem, go ahead and reply and share us the info, and maybe we can find an easier solution to it or even a way to prevent it from happening in the first place.

You should file a ticket, as they may ask you to send them the scene file.

Just a thought; do you have binary morphs enabled?

All together now- "Do you have external binary morphs enabled?"

I assume you don't, as the issue of losing morphs with it turned on is well known. It think it's on by default so perhaps you've never turned it off? Though people do report losing morphs with it disabled. Happens to me all the time and it's very annoying.

Edit - xpost with wandW

Even if you do have binary morphs enabled, and disabling them fixed it, send in a ticket, because it will never get fixed if the bugs aren't reported...

That was one of the first things i tested. I unchecked "external binary morphs" in the preferences, and the war orc model still lost his head morphs. For sure i thought that woulda fixed it, but it didn't =(

Also, just filed a ticket. Hopefully they look into it. It's an annoying bug.

EBM is always off on mine.

Just an FYI, I quickly ran a test on both Miki1020 and V4.2 under similar situations and found no changes to the morphed figures in either case after reopening.  The M4 case is the most overt issue I've seen.

Quote - Just an FYI, I quickly ran a test on both Miki1020 and V4.2 under similar situations and found no changes to the morphed figures in either case after reopening.  The M4 case is the most overt issue I've seen.

Seems to just reinforce my point that it's most likely an issue specifically with M4 and/or his morphs, which means Daz would have to deal with it. If the issue can be repeated in other figures then that would suggest a problem with poser itself, but so far it doesnt. 

Does Daz even offer support for issues with their figures in P9/PP2012?  

Is the problem happening in previous versions of poser? Anyone test?

I'd do some testing myself but I don't own any character sets for M4. I don't even have any clothes for him, lol. Bought him back when he first released, same as V4, but don't use either of them. 

~Shane

It's gotta be something with his CR2... Just saying. Does anyone have an old M4 CR2 they can compare against the newer version?

IIRC, M4 is included with PP2012, right? I looked in the directories and just see .dat files, no CR2s for him in the default directory structure. So, I assume it's reconstructing him from those. No idea, since I use my old separate Runtime.

What version are people using? Are they using the old CR2 or the whatsits that came with PP2012/alternate?

I don't think that any of the Daz figures are included with PP2012, Morkonan... I'm pretty sure that with the exception of Zygote stuff Daz has never included their figures with installations of Poser? I would be really shocked if M4 were, all things considered, but then again I dont have PP2012. I think the .dat files are probably related to making M4 compatible with Poser's universal pose functionality.

Is the .dat file part of Wardrobe Wizard, supplied with PP2012 ?

M4 does not, and never has, come with Poser. The figure is owned by Daz.

Yep, testing him in another Poser version would determine whether it is app related or M4 himself.  And M4 is definitely not Poser legacy; as Basic states, he is the exclusive property of DAZ3D.

I don't think that checking/unchecking Use Binary Morphs is going to matter unless you are saving M4 out (which would break a lot of things).  That setting disables/enables writing out morphs as a PMD file when you save content to the library (probably if you save a scene also).

M4 uses a proprietary system to build his (basic, ++, etc) morph sets (EXP, a batch-file cr2 modification) and there have been occasional issues with that in V4 (I have experienced eye movement dials no longer working, randomly).  Then the figure also contains the older community injection blank slots system (also proprietary), which might be what these add-on products are using.  Lizardians appear to be DS compatible, which leads me to believe they use either EXP or blank slots to contain the morphs, not PMD, which is Poser's native system.

There's nothing wrong with proprietary systems (pros and cons) but it's hard to enforce who's needs to look at that - SM or DAZ.  Both would probably be the best course of action :)

This issue definitely started when i upgraded to SR3.1 or possibly in SR2. I upgraded from SR1 to SR3.1 to use ezskin 2, and i never had any issues with the war orc or lizardian on SR1. I'm guessing it has something to do with the scaling issue they fixed, but broke other things like the freak4 shoulder issue.

Quote - This issue definitely started when i upgraded to SR3.1 or possibly in SR2. I upgraded from SR1 to SR3.1 to use ezskin 2, and i never had any issues with the war orc or lizardian on SR1. I'm guessing it has something to do with the scaling issue they fixed, but broke other things like the freak4 shoulder issue.

The freak4 shoulder issue is a bug in M4 and was present with SR1 as well. So either this particular bug exists in SR1 or it is a different bug

The freak4 shoulder issue can be fixed in this way: http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?72599-Solution-for-the-Freak4-scaling-problem

M4 has some other problems as well for which P9 provides a sulution (the Match Endpoints when conforming). These issues with M4 became apparent when poser fixed the scaling problems

"What happens is that if you're using a Michael 4, then you import another Michael 4, or any part of him (i.e. head), then save the scene out to the usual pz3, there's a chance he will lose some of his morphs. This also happens if you save him to the figure library when another Michael 4 or any other parts of Michael 4 are parented to him."

I had the same experience. It happened after I installed the DSON importer for Poser. I deinstalled it and afterwards the morphs were saved as usual. Recently I tried DSON again but with the most recent version of the DSON importer and the problem did not appear again.

did you have a look at the .cr2? maybe the actors are saved twice, and the second occurance in the files might partially overwrite the first. when poser is traversing the scene to save, the parenting might let it recurse into the parented entity

Quote - Is the .dat file part of Wardrobe Wizard, supplied with PP2012 ?

No.  If you want M4 for WW you have to purchase it separately from PhilC.  The only included figures for WW are the Poser content figures.

I found that I have to re-initialize the morphs after installing a new SR or switching to a new version of Poser.  Have you tried running the dos bat for morphs since you installed SR3.1?

Quote - I found that I have to re-initialize the morphs after installing a new SR or switching to a new version of Poser.  Have you tried running the dos bat for morphs since you installed SR3.1?

It also happens with certain custom morphs that you inject, like the war orc head. Do we have to reinitialize Michael 4 and the morphs++ when we install a new SR?

wimvdb: Are you having the same issues with M4?

Do you have to?  I don't know.  As far as DAZ was concerned, my installation of Gen 4 figures to external runtimes was "wrong".  They think everything should be installed to one gigantic content folder. 

Does it help?  I found through experience it does. 

same thing goes on with V3 in some cases if I have more than 1 instance of that figure or a related mesh figure. It would also have Poser crash upon exiting the app after editing a scene and saving. Turning off the EBM fixed both the morphs and the crashing on my system.