So I am new to Poser Pro (well, had it for a while, never got around to working with it until now) and most of my workflow so far has been focussing on doing something really really neat and then backtracking as many steps as possible to try and discover what I unwitting broke forty-eight hours of tiny little adjustments and changes ago.

Such is the life of a new user of complex software.

So, here is my current pickle: I have discovered that all the morphs I have done and saved to my library ahve deloved the same problem, namely this:

By going back into older saved versions of these models - i.e. the original source model for the 'save to library morph' - I have leaned that this problem (the upper lip becoming glued to the bottom) occurs the moment the morph is saved to the library: not only does the uploaded model have it, but the model-that-was-copied gets it too!

Screen Shot 2020-08-25 at 2.35.40 AM.png

You can watch it happen in real-time:

The only reason I didn't notice before now was that none of my models had their mouths open.

PLEASE: how do I fix this? And how do I stop it from happening again?

Does it work if you start with the model's mouth open?

Before I start writing a bunch of stuff...

Does the figure have a jaw actor?

Also. How are you saving your morphs to the library?

randym77 posted at 11:05AM Sat, 29 August 2020 - #4397902

Does it work if you start with the model's mouth open?

Yes. That's how you can tell it happens instantly - you can look at the mouth and the moment you upload it the moment that issue happens on the model you just uploaded. That is to say, the model you have open right now ALSO develops the problem, not merely the copy of the model saved to the library.

EldritchCellar posted at 11:06AM Sat, 29 August 2020 - #4397909

Before I start writing a bunch of stuff...

Does the figure have a jaw actor?

Also. How are you saving your morphs to the library?

What do you mean by 'jaw actor'? The models I have seen this happen on thus-far are all Alyson models - what I have listed as Alyson2, Alisha2, Izumi2, and Maria2. Happened on all of them.

I upload them in the following manner: I select the figure and make sure I have Body selected. I go to my library, select the folder I want upload the model into, and click the plus (+) button at the bottom of the screen. I get a pop-up window asking me for the name, and if I want to include the custom dial palettes and/or graphs. I select these. I click OK. The moment I do, the model on the screen develops the mouth problem.

That's weird. Normally this problem occurs when you try to modify the lips in an external modeling program, and accidentally select part of the lower lip along with the upper. The fix is to start with the lips very slightly open so you can select without overlap.

But if this is happening on the original models, before you've tried to modify them, it may indicate a similar defect in the originals???

Looks like a vert is somehow not being "included" in the inclusion zone of the jaw weighting rather than a morph defect.

Yeah, that sounds right.

Then again the vert is being pulled downward from the upper lip. Generally such a thing would be happening because of the weighting of the lower jaw. I don't think alyson has an upper jaw lol. I can't check, poser is tied up rendering.

The only reason it even occured to me is from seeing similar spiking occuring in conformers...

I'll have to bow out of this one. Not enough concise information, and not likely to be. If it's a morph problem it would require fix morphs and subtracting the baked open mouth as a morph from the lot. Probably beyond the scope of what OP would want to do.

Alyson does have an upper jaw. Looking at it I'd say that the problem IS a morph problem rather than some falloff issue... who knows...

So... the problem is vaguely understood but no one knows a solution?

I know a solution. If it's a morph problem. There's no guarantee that the morph brush in Poser can fix it though. I'll get to that.

So you made a morph for Alyson and you discover that you accidentally pulled a vert on her lower lip while making the morph.

Same here. I made this nifty alien morph but I messed up her lip in the process... You can see the problem when I use her open mouth morph...

Let's take a closer look. Yup, It's one vertice translated in the Y axis...

At this point I'll prepare to fix the morph.

First I zero Alyson by going to the Figure Menu: Zero Figure.

We want Alyson's mouth open so we can get at the errant vertice but we dont want to involve her jaw bone in any way, we just want her head mesh involved. So for this I'm going to bake Alyson's Mouth Open morph to a deformation that just involves the head.

To do so I make sure that Alyson's Mouth Open morph is dialed to 1. I also make sure that otherwise she is completely zeroed and that inverse kinematics on her right and left legs is turned OFF.

With her Mouth Open at 1 I go to File: Export: Wavefront Object and clear everything out by clicking the Universe checkbox.

I check only her head. And I make sure everything is unchecked in the Export Options box...

I save the export as MouthOpenMorph...

I close Alyson's mouth by Zero Figure (you can just dial it to 0 but I use Zero figure alot to make sure only that which I want to be active is active)

I then go to Alyson's head and go to the Properties tab and click Load Morph Target

I select the MouthOpenMorph that I just saved and load it to Alyson's head.

I go to the new dial, MouthOpenMorph, at the bottom of Alyson's Morph parameter group, and dial to 1. The mouth opens but the teeth and tongue are unaffected.

Now I dial my Alien Head morph to 1.

At this point I have only the MouthOpenMorph and my Alien head morph dialed to 1...

Here is where we are going to attempt to push that stray vertice back into place. You're going to open the morph brush and create a new morph in Alyson's head. At this point you are going to use a very very small brush with a high magnitude and try to blast smooth the vertice back down flat to the rest of the lip. Or whatever you can do to get that vertice back down.... you'll be trying to effect that one vertice at the top of the spike of polys...

Meanwhile I open Mudbox, export my Alyson's alien head with the 2 morphs active (Alien Head and MouthOpenMorph) and import the head into mudbox.

There I zoom in close, smooth the vertice down with a few strokes of the smooth brush, and export the result as a morph target LipFix1. I load the LipFix1 to Alyson's head.

At this point you should have your lip fix done with the morph brush...

We're going to bake the fix now and also subtract the mouth open morph.

Make sure that only these morphs are set as follows

Lipfix that you created with the morph brush should be set at 1

MouthOpenMorph that you created should be set at -1

File: Export: Wavefront Object. Alyson's head. All boxes unchecked as before. Call this morph MyMorphFixed. Export.

Zero Alyson. In head properties load morph target MyMorphFixed and dial to 1.

There's your original morph with the errant vertice fixed...

I would save an injection file for the morph rather than store it in a cr2 in the library. That way it's nice and neat and able to be applied as a pose whenever you want.

To create an injection file simply go to File: Export: Morph Injection

You'll be presented with a list of all morphs in the figure. Click the top Alyson checkbox to clear all. Find Alyson's head and MyMorphFixed and check only the morph you want included in the inject. Save it to your pose library. The INJ pose pz2 and the like named pmd should stay together...

Here's the AlysonAlien injection file if anyone wants it...

AlysonAlienINJ

Let me know if you run into any snags. For instance in this post you may have to have the lip fix at 1, the original morph at 1, and the MouthOpenMorph at -1 before you do the final fix bake export. Our workflows may be different because you are using the Morph brush within Poser so a step of baking might differ from mine...

EldritchCellar posted at 7:57PM Tue, 01 September 2020 - #4398371

We're going to bake the fix now and also subtract the mouth open morph.

Make sure that only these morphs are set as follows

Lipfix that you created with the morph brush should be set at 1

MouthOpenMorph that you created should be set at -1

File: Export: Wavefront Object. Alyson's head. All boxes unchecked as before. Call this morph MyMorphFixed. Export.

Zero Alyson. In head properties load morph target MyMorphFixed and dial to 1.

There's your original morph with the errant vertice fixed...

Thanks for offering a fix! But what is causing the problem? Is it the weight-mapping built into the figure, or something the OP did wrong with the morph?

Hard to tell. I doubt he'll be able to fix it even with my instructions. The only reason I responded with the fix is to demonstrate that if it's just a morph problem it's easily fixable.

Back to what I was originally working on lol.

...that might sound harsh but my meaning is that the Morph Brush is too clumsy for the task. At least in my hands. Mudbox is 10 bucks a month and makes fixes like that take literally seconds. I couldn't do it with the Morph Brush. But that's not to say that someone who uses the Morph Brush regularly wouldn't be able to do it... I think you'd have to be a bit of a masochist though lol.

I think Alyson might have some potential. Poor thing.