I asked this on the Sculptris forum but nobody knew, so I thought I'd increase my odds by asking here too. I just recently downloaded Sculptris. I made a head morph for Poser in the following way: Exported the character's head as an .obj. Imported it into Sculptris. Sculpted it. I did it exactly how I'd read to do: Selected "do not resize," turned off symmetry, turned "detail" down to zero. Exported it under a new name. Loaded it back into Poser as a morph target for the same character I'd exported it from. I had done something like this before with other programs, without any problems. But the new head, instead of appearing on top of the shoulders, appeared below the floor, when the dial was set at 1. I really like using Sculptris, so it makes me kind of sad to not be able to use it for morphs. I am using Poser 10. I'm still a newbie at both programs. Does anyone know how to make this work?

I also tried not changing it at all, just importing it into Sculptris and immediately exporting it, to see what would happen, and it did the same thing when I loaded it into Poser. It doesn't complain about the vertices or anything, it just applies it in that strange way. I also tried running it through Blender and MT Mirror, before loading it back into Poser (just to try some random things), and that didn't fix it either.

I've never used Scupltris but I have used Maya. When you select the head in Poser it will have a positive Y value. What I'm thinking is that somewhere, either in the export from Poser or the import into Sculptris or even when you're sending the model back to Poser from Sculptris the Y value is being altered. I can't remember exactly but I'll see if I can get the chance tonight to try out what I think is wrong and let you know.

Somehow it has been resized or moved. When exporting from Poser as an *.obj make sure "Save as Morph Target" is checked. Maybe by accident you have moved the whole face in sculptris. That could happen very easily if you are not careful enough. It actually doesn't look resized  more like translated.

Quote - I've never used Scupltris but I have used Maya. When you select the head in Poser it will have a positive Y value. What I'm thinking is that somewhere, either in the export from Poser or the import into Sculptris or even when you're sending the model back to Poser from Sculptris the Y value is being altered. I can't remember exactly but I'll see if I can get the chance tonight to try out what I think is wrong and let you know.

yup set your dial to one. If your face touches the ground, then sculptris sets the Y-value for the imported mesh to zero. On import Poser will read zero.

I mostly altered the whole Body-mesh in sculptris and use it as a complete Body-morph. Check carefully what you are going to export. Just export the figure mesh - no attached hair or clothes nor any props, or your import won't work.

Thanks. The Y-value thing makes sense, but how can I stop it from happening?

Could reproduce your error. Lots of features don't seem to work properly, if you have your figure set to unimesh. Try Poser traditional instead. Menue>Figure>Skinning Method>Poser Traditional.

It is already set on Poser Traditional.

Quote - I also tried not changing it at all, just importing it into Sculptris and immediately exporting it, to see what would happen, and it did the same thing when I loaded it into Poser. It doesn't complain about the vertices or anything, it just applies it in that strange way. I also tried running it through Blender and MT Mirror, before loading it back into Poser (just to try some random things), and that didn't fix it either.

Try this:

Take the morph you were having issues with and import it as a head morph into Poser.  Now, do as you said in this quote and export another morph that is importing the base head and immediately exporting it.  Import that morph into Poser as well.

Take the first morph and dial it to 1.000

Take the second morph and dial it to -1.000

Spawn a new morph.  This should subtract the weirdness and you get a new morph that works.

That's actually a brilliant idea. Unfortunately it didn't really work so well in practice. It still came out very weird-looking, it didn't balance out perfectly so I had to manually adjust it and I never could get the head to line up properly with the eyes, and I think mixing in the base head cancelled out the morph.

I tried doing the whole body, just to see if it would work, but it told me it had the wrong number of vertices, even though it never said that for the head, and I didn't change anything or resize.

I'm not a programmer, but if the problem is that Sculptris is changing the Y-coordinate, then it seems like the solution would be to open up the file and change it back. I assume that the original file that I exported will reveal the original Y value. But if I attempt this on my own without guidance from a programmer, I will probably break it, because the code won't mean anything to me. Any advice?

I just figured out that these heads that I'm importing from sculptris don't even contain the morphs. The faces that appear at strange places are the default face of the character, with no morphs, even though the one I exported from Poser was already morphed. It seems to be stripping information from them.

The last thing I tried, inspired by Netherworks's advice, was to set my already morphed in Poser head to -1 and spawn a morph target from it (since it already contains changes I wanted to make anyway) and then load the Sculptris morph, set the Sculptris morph to 1, and the morph spawned from the negative morph to -1. When I tested this in Poser before running it through Sculptris, it behaved as expected.  The ones I am exporting from Sculptris are not morphed. they are plain default heads.

Has nobody else ever had this problem with Sculptris? I did a web search and found no mention of it.

What figure are you using? 

Is the figure in its absolute zero pose before you export? This is not the same as the pose that it comes in from the library.

And what settings are you exporting with? 

~Shane

Actually this has been a long lasting problem, that surfaces every few months.
Sculptris, while being a good 3D app, is NOT compatible with Poser for making Morphs.

Ok, there are some tips and tricks but they usually bring more problems afterwards then they solve.

Best to use a standard 3D app to make morphs for Poser/DS figures like Hexagon, or Blender, or if you hace the $$ Zbrush.

Blender being the preferred app. (by far) and is is free, with a good and up to date manual, and tons of tutorials on youtube.

And as AmbientShade pointed out.

Before exporting anything from Poser, be sure to click "ZERO figure" first.
And show a screengrab of your export options.

Does not change my previous remarks that Sculptris is "tricky" for making morphs.

The figure was in his zero pose, I did have head morphs applied, I figured it was good to get it as close to what I wanted as I could and then touch it up. But I also tried it with a completely zeroed figure and it didn't make any difference. When I export I'm sending just the head, and I'm checking "as morph target" and "include body part names..." and nothing else.

As I said, Sculptris is even erasing the morphs that were already on the head when I sent it. It sends back the default zeroed head. Does it do that with any other software that people try to use it with, or just with Poser?

I don't want to learn Blender right now. I want to learn it later. I'm trying to learn Poser right now, and that by itself is overloading my brain.  Sculptris seemed like a good idea because it's very simple.  I can't afford Zbrush unless I stop paying rent or something. This stuff is just a hobby for me and I don't anticipate that it will ever make me any money so I can't really pretend that it's an investment.

I tried going into the Sculpt mode in Blender, and I couldn't even figure out how to zoom in so that it was big enough to see, and I get tired of asking infinite stupid questions on forums, and I'm sure I would have many others, and I know there is a manual, and videos,  but all I'm trying to do is make some imaginary people's heads look the way I want, for my own artistic satisfaction, and although I am kind of obsessed with that quest, I have no ambition to become a 3D modeller, so it seems like overkill.  I mean, I'll do what it takes, but it's already turning out to be a very indirect route to what I'm actually trying to accomplish, I don't even have a background in computers, I guess all this stuff that I'm having to quickly stuff into my brain will be useful for other things, but it was my desire to make some characters that led me to start learning all this software, instead of the other way around.  Sorry for the rant, but I think I'm going to have to take a break and do something simple for a while.

Is Hexagon fairly intuitive? I noticed it doesn't cost very much.

I also tried it with various characters to make sure it's not just the figure I'm using.  It's the same. I'm using Michael 4, but it doesn't make any difference.

I guess I'll give Blender another try.

"Ok, there are some tips and tricks but they usually bring more problems afterwards then they solve."

Ok, I'm listening...

If you are reading and listening?

Use Blender, Hexagon, anim8or, Zbrush, Maya, Lightwave and so on.

Blacksmith3D is a popular morphing and texturing package that was built to work with Poser figures and it's available here in the MP:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?TopID=10626.341390

Sculptris can be tricky, but if you can get in touch with ColorCurvature, he has a script called Pose Morph Loader, that many people use to transfer their custom morphs to their figures. It worked for me when I had a similar issue as you are having here, only I wasn't using Sculptris. You could sitemail him and see if he responds. He usually does pretty quickly.

I use Z-Brush for all my morphing needs, as there is really no comparison. But it is relatively expensive and not for everybody. However it is directly linked to Poser 9+ via GoZ so there is no hassle when trying to load custom morphs. 

Other than that, your only real free options would be Blender and trying to learn that, which there are several tutorials for it on youtube and other sites.

Don't even bother with Maya or Lightwave as those packages cost thousands and would be overkill for what you're trying to do. 

I'm not familiar enough with Sculptris to be of any help to you in that regard. I can try some experimenting to see if I can sort it out a bit later, but I can't right now as I haven't slept in over 40 hours so my brain is pretty much mush at the moment.

~Shane

I believe sculptris was designed to create items from scratch, rather than modifying existing mesh. The tech to do this was bought by Pixelogic and used as Dynamesh in Zbrush. Some of its functions actually add polygons to the mesh (like turning on symmetry) the last time I checked, so it's not a good choice for making morphs for Poser. Zbrush is really not that expensive (well in comparison to the other software I bought), but its features make it well worth the cost. I would look at either blacksmith3d or 3DCoat for less expensive options, or blender for your free option. The threads that I came across on people trying to use Sculptris was that they couldn't get morphs working and tried a different tool.

I actually downloaded Sculptris after reading this thread because I thought, Why not?

I can't get the morphs to work either. But I suspect my problems are a bit different.

In any case, I did read this thread over at Daz. They're talking about Genesis figures, but I'd think it might apply to Daz figures in Poser. It is a workaround for the symmetry issues, in any case.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/10974/

I have been messing with Sculptris for  a couple years now, and one thing I noticed when I import a sculpt into Wings 3D is that all the edges in any sculpt I did in Sculptris are converted to hard edges. I haven't tried to load the .obj into any other software to double check this, but it seems to be true 100% of the time with Wings. This may contribute to the inability to use Sculptris to create morphs.

I still haven't been able to create a working morph not matter what I do. There always seems to be a problem with it. But I don't spend money on high end modeling software either, so that's probably part of my problem...

Looks like Blacksmith 3d probably has the best price / ease of use ratio, particularly while it's on sale. Tempting. Very tempting indeed.

It's too bad, I really liked using Sculptris, it was easy and fun.  I still think there must be a way, because there are people who claim to have done it.  Lots of people say they can use it with Daz. I've already decided I'm a Poser user instead of a Daz user.  The reason I bought Poser in the first place was so that I wouldn't have to ever use the Daz software again.  I briefly considered that I could try making the morph from Daz and then export it from there to Poser, but with the amount of work that's going to take I might as well learn to use Blender.  Probably nobody will tell me how to export just the head (without the arms and legs) from Daz, and then import it back as a morph target, and then export it (just the head again) to Poser as a morph target. Probably they will tell me to read the manual. And it's probably 1500 pages long and doesn't even directly address that question.

See, I tried it last night. You go to "scene," and there are these eye icons that you turn off for everything except the head, with the character still checked. But there are no icons for the lower arms and legs, or the hands and feet. So if you uncheck everything except the head, and then export, it exports the head along with the lower half of the arms and legs. Needless to say, you can't use this as a head morph.

Even if there is no way to export just the head from Daz, it should be theoretically possible to open it in Blender and delete everything but the head. But since the answer is again probably "read the manual" and it's the length of an epic saga, that doesn't help me in the immediate future.

It isn't just the Daz figures that Sculptris has a problem with. I tried some original Poser characters too. Same effect.

I opened up the .obj files from before and after it was saved in Sculptris, and as I suspected, the one that was exported from Scultris is much shorter.  I can't read the code, but I can see just from the number of lines in the file that Sculptris is removing information from it.

As for other softwares: I'm going to start getting trial versions to see what I get along with the best. What is an example of one that is fast to learn, makes some kind of intuitive sense,  does what Sculptris does but you can actually use it as a morph target for Poser, and costs under $200? Blacksmith sounds promising if it was made with that in mind; maybe I'll start with that.

It would be an added bonus if it can do what Wrapit does.  (That is, copy a morph from one mesh to another.)

Sorry.

Moriador, could you describe the problems you are having with Sculptris? You say you think your problems are "a bit different"; does that mean you don't have the problem I described?

Does anyone know how to export just the head from Daz Studio? (It's worth a try.)

I think I figured out how to export the head. Each body part opens to other ones, you just have to keep opening them and checking them off.

Does anyone know how to import it back into Daz as a head morph, and then how to find it, so that I can see if it works? (It doesn't just appear in Parameters like it does in Poser.)

Further research has revealed that the people who are making morphs for Daz Studio with Sculptris are all using Genesis, and that Sculptris doesn't work with the Generation 4 characters, so it looks like I will have to scrap my plan to make a morph for Michael 4 using Sculptris (which is disappointing, because the morph I made looked better than what I was able to do with anything else.)