I found some old tutorials by PhilC on this, and also dug out an old copy of Composer (which no longer seems to be available or supported).   I'm not quite ready to start doing morphs for V4/M4 in Blender yet but its on my "to do" list.

Does anyone have any experience creating morphs and full body morphs in Blender and then importing them to Poser?  Methods for avoiding the exploding character problem?  Maintaining proper vertex order?   Is there any more updated methods or software for this?

I know there was work on a plugin for exporting props from Blender to Poser that was to eventually include character import/export but last I looked at their web site they never got that part working.

Hello BardicHeart 

I have not tried this yet myself and this tutorial I came across does discuss creating full body morphs but it is using Blender 2.49 now I have found that even tutorials for the older verison can be done with a bit of tweaking in the current version of Blender so not sure if this will give you some help hope it does 

Creating Poser FBMs in Blender

Thank you, this was exactly the info I needed!

Just tried a test of it and it works fine, no problems at all.   Here's what I did.

I imported V4 as instructed in the video.

I went to the mesh and selected just the head (selecting by vertex group which is preserved), inverted the selection and deleted the rest of the mesh.

I then scaled the head up 10x so I had something easy to sculpt on, did a simple and quick sculpt job.

Used Alt-S to remove all scaling and return the head to its original size (VERY important)

Exported it as an obj file according to the instructions in the video.  Blender 2.67b looks a bit different but the options are still there.  In the video he talks about using X90 Rotation, the newer Blender handles this a little differently, -Z forward Y up, which is the same thing so that part of the default setting is fine.

Went to Poser 6 and loaded V4.2

Selected her head, imported my simple morph and here's the result...

Everything worked beautifully.   I haven't tried doing a full body morph yet, I'm still learning about setting up / importing those into Poser, doing INJ/REM and all that, but that can wait til later (not really ready to dive into char modelling just yet, but perhaps in a few months).  But based on this it looks very promising and I think I will be able to use Blender to create some great new morphs, FBMs and characters in the future!

Thanks Lobo!  Happy rendering!

Glad I was able to help havent tried doing morphs myself yet but I constantly saving links of potential info I might need later on so glad this one was of some help to you anytime I can be of some help just ask 

I do the same, I got a plug in for Firefox that lets me download and save the videos.  I've been collecting and organizing tutorial videos on Blender and Poser and then watching them as I have time (and sometimes rewatching them several times depending on the amount of content).

This video was very easy to follow and the method was a snap.  I have presets saved in Blender now for the import and export so that won't be a problem again, just select my Poser presets and I'm off.

Creating FBMs and exporting them as an OBJ won't be a problem.  The only thing slowing me down at importing them into Poser is a) lack of practice / experience and b) I'm still using Poser 6.  I'm given to understand the newer versions of Poser have better FBM import tools but if I can manage it in Poser 6 the rest should be a snap.  So still good to "cut my teeth on" I suppose.  LOL   Doesn't hurt to be backwards compatible either.

And likewise if I can help with questions about Blender, fire away.  I wouldn't call myself an expert but I'm pretty good with some aspects of it. 

Well I went to Blender since they changed that made learning it much easier than the former 2.49 interface. I learned to model with Hexagon which i still use sometimes but developement and fixes seem to have stopped completely. I heard about that plug in for  Firefox but as of late Firefox has become to moody and crashing way to often so been using chrome as a defualt browser. I have Poser 2012 but still go back to Poser 7 which still seems a bit easier to work with. Saw you Garden Project does look pretty impressive 

It seems like Blender has been really advancing a lot lately.  They've done a lot to improve the GUI as well as adding a lot of useful tools.   Its a shame work on the PT2 tools seems to have stopped, that would have nicely rounded out those options.

Now if only GIMP would catch up to Photoshop just as quickly...  and also not crash on Windows 7 (I think its secretly trying to tell me to switch to Linux, and I am soooooo tempted).

There are at least 3 different plugins for Firefox that I've found that let you download videos, I use 2 of them.  Sometimes one works there the other doesn't but they don't seem to conflict with each other.  I haven't had any issues with Firefox crashing but that may be differences in platform and OS.   Chrome seems pretty highly rated so whatever works for ya.  If you need need a vid, let me know and I'll see what I can share (have to be careful, some were not free).

Glad you like the garden project so far, don't know if you saw my blog post about it on my web site, I've got quite a bit planned.  All of it was modelled in Blender.  What I've shown so far are just the low poly models which are what I'll be distributing.  I'm also doing some high poly models (and by high I mean about 100k polys for one wall) that I'll be painting textures for in Blender and then baking the texture and the displacement map to the low poly wall for export to Poser.   With the detail I managed in the low poly wall, should produce pretty good results.  I'm hoping to do about 4 complete texture sets for it and also thinking of adding a "distressed" overlay if I can manage it.  I'm still figuring out how to set some of it up in Poser.

In a way I'm glad to still be working in Poser 6 for this because it means my final project will be backwards compatible and should work fine for a pretty wide range of Poser users, that's always a good thing.   Am looking forward to getting the new software (Pro 2014) though and seeing what it can do.

I think I vaguely remember trying Hexagon once.  I learned 3D modelling originally in a VERY old copy of of 3DS Max years ago as well as some Autocad training I had back when I thought I was going to be an architect.  I had started really getting into 3D modelling about the time my career as a painting contractor took off and I just didn't have time to keep up.   So now I'm back to 3D modelling and digital art.  Bit of catching up to do, but fortunately I learn fast.   Now if I could just manage to squeeze about 40 hrs into a 24 hr day I'd be set... lol   So much I want to do and never enough time.

Saw your "disappointment" with gimp, there is several other builds for gimp you may have better luck with. I use a "portable" build ( http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable ) even on other peeps machines it works fine

or theres a couple of builds on graphicall you might want to try ( http://www.graphicall.org/gimp )

have seen a lot moaning about gimp 2.8 so maybe an older version will work for you

have fun

Was going to mention that I have Gimp 2.8 and noticed the crashing as well at first but reinstalled it a second time latest build and this time when it installed it installed as the 64 Bit verison and have not had it crash since and also notice that there is an older plug in pack that due to some changes in how Gimp handles plug ins now that cuased some instablity with Gimp. The Gimp Massive package seems to cause crashing issues where as the Gimp Extension Plug in seems to work more stable with the current version of Gimp

Wasn't so much disappointed with GIMP as I just had problems with that particular build.  Apparently I wasn't alone.  I figured they'd correct it eventually.  For the time being I'm still using Photoshop CS5.5 Ext, though I want to migrate away from it.  I'm looking at getting Corel's Paint Shop Pro, which is a bit ironic for me personally considering PSP (back when it was made by JASC) was my first serious paint program.  They have some video software that you can get with it that I think might be handy in the future and then there is Corel Draw which has a variety of professional applications I could probably put to good use.

I would love to see the people developing GIMP move forward the way Blender has recently.  In my opinion Blender is fast becoming a challenger to 3DS Max at this point.  If GIMP did the same with regard to Photoshop... whoa boy! :-)

Back to the topic, found this tutorial on making PBMs and FBMs by Nerd3D

http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=13

Now back to all these Blender tutorials I've DLed

Happy Blending/Posing!

Just a side note but I found why GIMP kept crashing.  Apparently GIMP stores your profile info and older versions can cause a conflict resulting in a crash.

I went to my Users/MyId/ folder on my HD (I'm using Windows) and deleted the gimp2.8 folder, reinstalled GIMP and it now loads fine and seems to run stable thus far.

Hopefully they'll fix that in a future build so that it either properly updates the profile info or deletes it during install or something to avoid this problem.

Just wanted to pass that along.

Quote - , the newer Blender handles this a little differently, -Z forward Y up, which is the same thing so that part of the default setting is fine.  

This option is also on import, do you alter this import option? I have problems on import in Poser with the exported Blender-obj. (wrong number of vertices).

Sorry for my bad english.

No, leave those at default.

The wrong number of vertices problem occurs if you add or remove any vertices at all.  You can move them around, just not add or delete any.

What specifically are you trying to export or import?

By default the import options are -Z forward Y up too, the same how on export. Is this correct?  I have import Dawn (the new figure) for making my own morph. I have not deleted or add vertices, I have only move vertices.

Yes, -Z forward and Y up is correct, that's what Poser uses.  (You can tell because in Poser the Y axis moves the object up and a negative number on the Z axis moves the object forward).

For figures, are you trying to make a full body morph or just for one body part?

I would like to make Morphs for the head and for the body.
However, the import in Blender claps only properly if I take the Original-obj from the geometry folder.

Yes, its best to use the original geometry.  You can export from Poser, to do so is to export to OBJ format, using only the following options.

Include Body Part Names in Polygon Groups

Weld Body Part Seams

Also, make sure the figure is zeroed and at the default center position in Poser.

When you import to Blender (whether from the geometry folder or an exported obj), use only Keep Vert Order and Poly Groups for the obj import (you can save it as a preset for future use).

Once you do that you'll have a proper mesh in Blender you can work on with your sculpt tools.  When you are done and ready to export you'll need to separate the individual parts (this may be why you are getting the wrong vert number its looking for a single body part and you might have been exporting the entire body).

For example, say you want to export the head.  Go to the Vert panel and where it says Vertex Groups, you should see a list of named groups that match the various body parts.  Select just the head by clicking on that group and then Select.  That will highlight just that vertext group

Press Shift+D to make a duplicate, Enter, then P to separate it out as its own object.  Then M and move it to another layer (just to make it easier to work with).  Now switch to that layer, select your new head object and export only it as an Obj.  Use only the following export options

Selection Only

Include UVs (not actually necessary for a morph target)

Write Materials (not actually necessary for a morph target)

Polygroups

Keep Vertex Order

Now you should have a obj you can load as a morph target for the head.

If you want to do a FBM as best as I understand it (and I have not tried this yet), you will have to export each body part this way, load the morphs to each body part in Poser, then set them all to 1 and spawn a FBM.

This is something I'm really hoping PhilC may eventually figure out a Python script to automate now that he's learning Blender.  But for now the manual method is the only one I know. 

I'm no expert with FBMs so if someone knows a better way of importing them, feel free to jump in here and share.

Thank you very much :) I will test it today. Thank you:)

I have tested it and it`s work very well. Thank you :)