Hi everyone, I remember a long time ago there was a tutorial here at Renderosity that described how to create a morphing prop for Poser, but I can't seem to find it now. The info may be a tad outdated, because I'm using Poser 11, but I can't imagine the procedure would be vastly different. I've also done a google search with a million results but not really what I was looking for. Not necessarily looking for that one specific tutorial, but just a good one that describes the steps to creating a morphing prop. As always, any help is appreciated

1. File Export Wavefront Obj. Or use the obj from Geometries that your .pp2 references (if you are not using embedded geometry) as an import into your external modeler. In general, unless there is a specific reason, you want your export to be in a default zero state.

2. If exporting from a Poser scene it's probably best to leave all options unchecked unless there's a specific reason you want the groups/materials to be used in your external modeler. For selection purposes would be a good reason. In general you do not need this information for creation of a morph target for a static prop. Props do not have body parts per se, but that's jumping ahead a bit.

3. Import your prop Obj into your modeler. You might have to scale your Obj up to work comfortably, be certain to scale back to default scale after you make your edits and are taking it back to Poser. Poser scale is very small compared to most other 3d apps.

4. Make whatever edits you need to. Be careful to not translate/move the entire model while editing unless you specifically need to do so for the intended morph. Do not increase the poly count of the Obj, do not add or delete vertices, or make any cuts or welds. Doing so will cause the wrong number of vertices error or change the winding/vertex order, rendering your morph target useless.

5. With your prop loaded in a scene back in poser, go to the props properties located in parameters and click load morph target. Select your edited mesh that you exported from your modeler. Name/label your morph if necessary, you might have named your exported/edited mesh as the relevant morph name when you exported it from your modeler, if so your morph will inherit that name so renaming will be unnecessary.

6. A morph dial will appear, with your selected label, in the props parameters. Dial to 1. If everything went ok your prop will deform to whatever morph you created.

Rinse and repeat. This is just the basic workflow. Should get you started...

Ok, this is indeed a good start. Just a couple quick questions however. My prop isn't a prop yet... at least it's not a .pp2 file. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'll need to start the process you described above by converting it to a .pp2, and then beginning with step 3 above, correct?

The minute you imported your model into Poser it became a prop. So no. You can create and load morph targets for your model without turning it into a .pp2.

If you want to save it to the library with your created poser morphs attached, then you'll want to save it as a prop. The prop you generated/saved to the Library will have embedded geometry. If you plan on sharing your morphing prop with others you'll want to remove the embedded geometry from the .pp2 and have your prop, rather, reference the original Obj in geometries. This is standard practice, but it's sort of a pain in the ass. Maybe Poser 12 will finally provide a built in utility to do this.

You can either do this manually by chopping out the obj blocks from the .pp2 file in a text editor and inserting a file path reference to your obj in Geometries, or use an automated utility solution for this. I use Netherwork's Content Creators Toybox...

If it's just for personal use just leave the embedded geometry info in your saved prop, or just save a pz3 scene with your morphing model, and use your original obj for further morphs if you like. It's not a big deal really.

If the OBJ is already in the right scale for Poser, you can just modify it in your modeling app and save the modified version as a separate OBJ. Bring the unmodified OBJ into Poser at 'original scale', load the modified version as a MT for the prop, then save as PP2.

Keeping the same scale all the way through is important. If you change the scale at any step, the MT will go wrong.

That's simply not true ockham. You can change scale and revert it back before loading as MT. I've done it a million times. In wings, blender, zbrush, and mudbox. Explain to me how changing the scale will make the morph target "go wrong"

Have you ever tried sculpting a poser scaled obj in mudbox or blender? Lol.

Scaling an obj does not change its winding order nor its number of polygons

Here's La Femme's head as a prop in a Poser scene... default scale. File export wavefront object...

Here's the settings for the export...

Here's La Femme Head imported into mudbox at default scale. You can't see the model because it's so tiny.

So I scale it up to 1000...

And sculpt a morph...

I then scale it back down to 1. Export from mudbox, load as morph target, and dial resulting morph to 1. Here's the result... looks fine to me.

"Keeping the same scale all the way through is important. If you change the scale at any step, the MT will go wrong."

?

Unless you're using prehistoric software that changes the origin of the model during import export process, scaling is perfectly fine. Just remember to scale back down to default scale before exporting.

Hence

"3. Import your prop Obj into your modeler. You might have to scale your Obj up to work comfortably, be certain to scale back to default scale after you make your edits and are taking it back to Poser. Poser scale is very small compared to most other 3d apps."

Good luck with your morphs.

One final image, here's the morph that I scaled, applied to La Femme rather than just as a prop... no translation errors.

Okay, so with work and everything, I finally found time to follow these steps and I'm finding that when I turn the morph dial I created, the model.... explodes. if I reset the morph to zero it looks fine, but a move in either direction and the model flips out and I have an explosion of vertices. What would cause this?

Botched up the vertex/winding order of the obj. The result is the model exploding into ragged crumpled spikes when the morph is dialed in. What modeler are you using to create morphs? Some modelers don't maintain vertex order. If you're using blender you need to check that option in the Obj import/export options: keep vertex order.

If you made any cuts in the model, but maintained number of vertices, this would also result in a wrong vertex order explosion.

...when morphing you just want to push/pull vertices to create shapes. No cuts. No adding or subtracting of vertices*. No mirroring that cuts the model in half for the mirror.

*there's a recent exception with subdivision level morphs, but it's probably not relevant to discuss.

You can try reloading your morph and checking "attempt vertex order correction". If this doesn't solve the problem the morph is no good. Try again.

Tell me what modeler you're using and I'll try to come up with a solution. If it's user error? Live and learn.

Okay, I'll take a look and try to reload the morph. I use Wings 3D as my modeler. Earlier today, I did it and it worked just fine, but soon after I deleted it to re-do something with the texture map. I re-did everything and this is the result. I've gone back and done the whole process over about 4 times now. That's what I get for trying to be a perfectionist!!

I'm sure it's user error, as you say because of my earlier success

Yup. Jumping back and forth to wings with morphs will change the vertex order. It's happened to me. The solution is to always work from a fresh copy out of poser rather than multiple edits of the same morph target over the same exported obj. Here's the workflow for wings...

1. Load your morph target onto your model in poser. Dial to 1.

2. If you want to further refine your morph in wings export that morph dialed to 1 from poser as a second wavefront obj export and refine that in wings. Straight one trip out, edit, one trip back for each successive refinement.

3. Reload as morph target this second edit. Dial to 0 the original version first. Dial your new edit to 1. Delete the original morph if you like. Click the little arrow to the right of the morph dial. Delete morph ( I'm not at Poser right now, so my naming conventions might be a little off). Also be careful to not have like named morphs. Always try to have unique names for each successive edit (numbering works fine).

If you need illustrations, for clarity sake, let me know.

Perfectionism is fine. It's knowing the proper steps with each particular software to get results that are usable, that's simply a learned process from trial and error.

Another thing to be careful with is steps throughout different softwares. So if I were to export an object out of Poser, sculpt it in Zbrush, and make some tiny tweaks to that Zbrush morph in Wings then load as morph target it would be fine. If however I were to export out of Poser, tweak in wings, then sculpt in Zbrush and load that in Poser it would explode. Certain paths will lead to scrambled vertex orders. Only trial and error can discover these things.

Let me see what I can do here.... By the way, Eldritch, thank you for taking the time :)

You're welcome arrowhead42

OK, I got it to work. I'll be darned if I know what I did differently that I hadn't done a dozen time already, though. But it works now!

Thanks for the wondrous advice !!

FWIW, Does John Hoagland's 'GeomStripper' c/o Vanishing Point etc suffice for ripping morphing props' PP2 ==>PP2+OBJ ?? I've used it several times recently to salvage bloated DSF ports' base mesh...

Regarding Poser scales: I wrangle a lot of FBX imports, with mixed success. Tree issues aside, import scaling may require a lot of iteration. I've met models needing ~0.5% to ~5000% of original, plus some for which I've yet to find a workable scale. It's really really annoying that there's no import option to scale to % of figure size, per OBJ import. It's also very annoying when FBX tree & rigging breaks, yet again, yet again, and you get 5~~50 'free flying' parts that you must use so-slow Hierarchy window to re-parent to place holder or delete. Yes, I've posted appropriate queries on relevant forums, but there seems no documentation on which FBX versions Poser fully supports....

My 'rule of thumb' is any FBX v6 tree/rig is probably okay. If 7.1, perhaps. If current 7.4, 'TSB,NFC'. YMMV. Solution, of course, of course, is for me to learn to totally rig/re-rig my zoo of imported freebies.....

Yes. Vanishing point's Geomstripper works fine for extracting embedded obj from props saved to library. You still need to add a file path reference pointing to your external obj into the pp2. IIRC the tutorial on the site goes over all this.

I only say it works fine because I've read the site tutorial and heard it recommended numerous times over the years. Up until just recently I was a Mac user so I had to do all these things by hand in a text editor.

Now I use Netherworks python scripts for those things...

I don't use FBX so I can't really comment, everything I use is OBJ...

_"Solution, of course, of course, is for me to learn to totally rig/re-rig my zoo of imported freebies....." _

Clean up the models. Group them to suit. Plop in a suitable donor skeleton in the setup room, adjust, season to taste. Many of the freebie figures that you find on ShareCG, fan art type figures, you can tell that someone created the model as a static mesh, another person took that model and just chucked a donor in there, did minimal as required faffing about with the joint editor and uploaded. The results show of course, but for personal use ok. Usually there's like a list of 2 or 3 people involved with such freebie figures. A modeler and a couple of people who got permission to "Posify" the model. Heck there's people on ShareCG who's whole repertoire is posifying other people's models and tacking their names onto it.