OK, I realize that Michael 2, and other Poser products, now have morphs and stuff that would be shared in cr2 files. For that reason we can't distribule cr2 files for these products. So the question is how to easily do what we need to do. I checked the DAZ site, and the link to their Michael2p4le.exe doesn't work. My simple mind can't track how the "light" version would handle our characters anyway. I checked a link to an excellent Poser Arcana tutorial on making MAT poses. That is way too deep for me. I chose to be a creative person, and don't do "programming" in any form. That includes editing CR2 files. (Hey I'm not good at it either.) Piracy is a legitimate concern here. So how can DAZ, or others who create these fine characters, make it easier for their customers to do the right thing? This would be an excellent chance for Customer Service, and there is also a more "self-serving" motive for the fine artists who create such characters. When you consider that such a process, program, whatever, serves a vital need for such artists or creators, then such a resource should be free!

Michael 2 characters can be shared and sold the same way as Victoria 2 characters. With MOR files, not MAT files. MAT files only carry the material setting. MOR files carry the dial settings needed to create characters. You do need to do hand editing to achieve MOR files, but you need to do this with MAT files as well. And it's no more complicated. If anyone is having problems with these I'd be willing to help. Once you get your head around them, they are quite simple s

I could definately use more help in the MAT files issue. The nice tutorial I previously mentioned seemed to be more concerned with creating a character/morphs whatever, using a text editor, rather than doing the work "as normal" with Poser, then creating the MAT. Of course, I am very confused on the entire issue.

MAT files apply texture settings, nothing else. Colm's tutorial in the tut's section here is the simplest to follow, and it works perfectly for Vicky and Mike. MOR files are a little harder to create. The simplest way to create one is to save a pose with morph channels included. That works as long as a) You're starting from a default pose b) You haven't used any full body morphs (because those aren't saved) Ideally, a MOR pose will contain is only the morph channels. Many don't - and that gets annoying when you apply them. You can't do it without using a text editor, though. The way I do it is create a .pz2 with morph channels included, then open it in a text editor and do two things: Add the 'body' morph channels Strip out the actual "pose" channels. What I end up with is a .pz2 that will apply the morphs without changing the character pose. (In theory - it works so far) Ron, you've got my email address: if you need more detailed help with this feel free to mail me. eirian

Eirian, You'll be hearing from me, but it may be a few days. I am slowly doing a totally new Poser install, with Poser as the only program on my 30GB hard drive. I am starting with Michael and Vicky and all their stuff. I chose to do it this way because I had so much stuff in my last install, and it got overwhelming.

Ron, Drax "wrote the book" on sharing the Millineum files... his notes on the subject are what Daz3d refers to. Mat files may seem scary... but from a fellow "creative" non-programming guy, they're a piece of cake once you play with one... it's basically a cr2 with almost everything but the texture information stripped out. I followed Syyd Raven's excellent tutorial at Posanation the first time I did it. Doug

Don't feel bad Ron, I'm struggling with the same issue. I could probably edit the cr2 file, but the thing is huge (mine is 22MB) and when I open notepad, it immediately throws it over to wordpad. I have yet to be able to cut one line from this huge file...I suppose it's a RAM issue (I don't have enough). If someone knows if this is the problem, please let me know. I could spend another $50 and buy CR2edit from the DAZ site, but I really don't want to. Alas, I'll probably mess around trying to edit and then end up spending the money anyway. Xena, if you have any ideas on the subject I'd love to hear them. :-)

Doug, you are definately "one up on me." I looked at Drax's Adobe Acrobat file. Drax knows his stuff, and communicates well. I was lost, and remain that way. So it's me. I would also share the same problem editing CR2 files. I refuse to spend $50 for CR2Edit just so I can share free figures. I suppose MS Word would cause all sorts of unwanted havoc. So the question remains where I could get a decent text editor to do the job, assuming I'd ever figure what I was doing. HmM, I guess any Musclebound Mike-based figures would be handled with that Delta Pose technology? But I can't imagine using Musclebound Mike to make my Marlin character?! After all Marlin is FAT!

Attached Link: http://www.editpadlite.com/

Follow the link and you get an great editor which can handle large files and its FREE !!!!!!!!!!

Thanks thgeisel...I'm off to get it!

LOL, Ron
Yeah, Musclebound Michael characters are handled using the DELTA-Injection Technology (the Poses located in DELTA MuscleMike under your pose library)

Also, if anyone is looking for a VERY good, FREE CR2 Editor, John Stallings has offered one up for free in the free stuff right here. It's the tool I've used in all of my CR2 Editing needs.

Ron 'DraX' DeFreitas,
3D-CC Database Administrator & Programmer

---

The 3D Comic Collective - "Where Comics Come to Life in 3Dimensions"
http://www.3d-cc.com

Thanks DraX...I'm off to get that one too! If I can't edit the files now, then I guess I'm just plain dumb and there's no help for me! :-)

I have never tried to do MOR files, I always use pose files and the characters I come across use pose files as well. Why would the MOR files be prefered (seem like alot more work)?

I've never seen anything offered in an MOR file. I wouldn't even know how to use it. I guess I'm not as bright as most people here. When I even think of trying to edit a file for a MAT, my brain gets tired. I'd sure like to know how, but I don't know if I have the patience to learn it. I'll look up Colm's tutorial and see what he says about it. Melanie

OK, this is really great. First I buy a $29. organizer that tells me to hit the Program key, and I can't find that one essential key anywhere. Now I'm looking for a CR2 Editor, but it's really called Poser Libary File Editor in Free Stuff. Then when you download it, it's called CR2 Editor. Geesh.

I feel your pain Ron...I got the editor, but don't know what to do with it now. :-(

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that the freely distributable .cr2 file will be available for download from the Michael 2 product pages later today. (These are basically the Michael 1 .cr2 file and a version of the Michael 2 P4 .cr2 file that has been stripped of all the exclusively Michael 2 morphs.)

That being said, we still recommend that people use MOR pose files when possible. In many cases they work just as effectively as .cr2 files for distributing customized morph combo characters, they are possible to use with Michael 2 morphs, and they take up a fraction of the memory that a .cr2 file would.

Please also check out our FAQ section for questions. If you have individual questions feel free to contact Reba at sales@daz3d.com for further explanations.

Thanks for your concern,
AnneMarie
DAZ
www.daz3d.com

You have M2.
You made a character using the dials and you want to share it.
If you save the pose (to the Pose Library) with morph channels selected. you have a MOR pose file.
It also has body position data, which is a pain. You can remove this using a TE - three rot and three trans channel keys for every actor.
Be careful of the { }. They must be dissected carefully.
The problem with M2 or V2 is that the proper way to shape the body is by using the FBM dials in Body, and Poser will not save these itself.
Also, some characters have scaling.

Here is how to do it: Do your M2 character, use the FBM dials where appropriate,
use the local dials when they are solo. Do not duplicate use of the same dials (FBM + local).- they add.
Do your scaling.
Save the pose with morph channels as a PZ2 file
Save the character as a CR2.
Copy the Char.cr2 and the char.pz2 to a distant folder.
Change the name of Char.cr2 to Char.pp2

Open Char.PZ2 in EditPad
FIND = thighLength 0.177885

REPLACE with =

actor BODY:1
{

}

If there is no thighLength - just insert this above
actor hip:1. (Just below the Version stuff)

Open both PZ2 and PP2 files in MM4.
Right click /Copy the FBM morph keys from Char.pp2 to Char.pz2
(You only need copy those morph you actually used, but you may be able to copy the whole block using the "Morphs" line.)
Do the same with those scale channels that you used.

One more trick: suppose you used outside morphs, in addition to M2 morphs? You should have combined these into a single morph "Outside" for every group involved.
Copy this morph from Char.PP2 to Char.PZ2. After you save Char.PZ2, open it in EditPad. You will see a lot of targetGeom #### and {key{k 0 0.34}} type blocks.
Except targetGeom Outside - which has a full morph header and a lot of "d" lines.
Look in the the same section, find a targetGeom ____ where the key = k 0 0.
This is a morph that is not used. replace targetGeom Outside (just this line) with targetGeom UNUSEDMORPHNAME and delete the block for the unused morph (Poser does not like duplicate instructions for the same morph)
You have just made a MOR donor file!
What happens is that instead of setting the dial of this unused morph to zero, you just replaced the whole thing with a new morph - except for the name -
The name on the dial is not the name Poser uses. That is on the line "Name ____"
Make sure of the k 0 # line in your donated morph, The # should be the dial setting (Should be 1.0 - usually)

If it is just head morphs, you can and should use face (FC2) This does not contain rot/trans data to begin with. and scaling is usually not appropriate.
You do not need a Body section.

I bet you can delete each of the Rot channels from Char.PZ2 using MM4, but EditPad is faster. MM4 will just delete the proper part and not leave any stray { or remove one too many.
This all repeats - block by block thru the Poser files, if you look for the pattern and pay attention, it should work.

As for MAT poses, it is all well and good to just distill a CR2 down and use this, but actually, the information in the MAT file should be limited to what you are changing.
If you do not supply Bump maps, delete those lines, no reflection maps? delete those, no Trans? delete.
If you supply a MAT pose with: Bump NO MAP
to someone who uses their own bump map, you just erased it

Wow, talk about getting further confused. If we get a version of Michael 2 that is essentially a stripped down version, are we really sharing any of our work with anyone? Jaeger, I'm sure all that stuff made sense to you, and probably to at least half the others who read this. You lost me by the time I started the second paragraph. There is no way in God's green earth I'm going to all that work. I just won't do any characters to share with anyone. I don't want to violate anyone's copyright, but I surely don't want to go through all that agony and work. Maybe one day someone will write a great program that would take care of the details for us. Better yet, maybe everyone should adopt Drax's Delta Pose technology. That works, right?!

Thanks for taking the time to share all that info Jaager...I'm going to save it to notepad so I can print it out. Correct me if I'm wrong...If I make a character using V2 and want to share her in freestuff or where ever, then I need to make a MOR file so as not to infringe on someone's copyright? It's my understanding that this so-called MOR file is actually V2 cr2 with all the goodies stripped and is saved as a pz2...this would also include her face? And this would be the case even if the only thing I changed on the original V2 cr2 is her face (since the body also has goodies)? Gee, I feel dumber by the minute. :-)

The Body section should probably be actor BODY:1 { channels { } } For the data to be accepted rockets - no the MOR file only sets the morph dials - a CR2 has the actual morphs. By providing the character in a CR2 -a V1 cr2, you are providing morphs the those who already have them. A waste of bandwidth, and it meeses up texturing for those who want to use your character with their textures. The way to get this - look at the files in a text editor. One files in the various Poser Libraries. See just what is there. Experiment with copies of the files, Change lines and see i.e. k 0 0 to k 0 1 the morph dial will be set to 1.0 It is not that difficult.

What about face poses in the Faces library? Can a face be shared? Doesn't this only use the dials that have to already exist on someone's figures in order to work? I sometimes save my own faces for my own work, just so I can bring the same character back just by clicking on the Faces library. Is this a way to share characters, with the disclaimer that you have to already own V2 or M2 in order for them to work properly? This is something I've wondered about for a while now. I know it doesn't save body types, but most of my characters are merely face changes anyway, leaving the body default. Melanie

A pose file.
If you save it without morph channels - it is a POS pose
(position)
If you save it with morph channels - it is a MOR pose
(morph) - it also has position
This is stuff Poser does automatically

You save a face pose - this is automatically a MOR pose for the head only - but no position

The thing is - you do an expression face Wide Grin or something - You use a standard V1 to do it - if this is used on a character formed by setting dials, the V1 dial part gets erased, and if the expression was saved using a V2 head, the whole character gets erased. When Poser saves it, it saves settings for all the morphs, even if the setting is zero.
If you want to use characters set up by morph dials and do not want the protect them by Spawning a combined morph for it, the only safe way to use expressions:
save the expression poses to the library with a figure that ONLY HAS expression morphs in it - no construction morphs.
If a morph is not in the CR2 a posed is saved from, Poser will not save a setting for it.

You will find instances where an expression was saved from a character also set with morph dials, and not only do you get the expression, you get the character. a bass ackwards way of doing it.

.

Dan Wilmes is working on making this transparent in CR2Edit.
You either pay to have it done for you by a program.
or
You learn how for yourself.
or
You don't play.

Attached Link: http://www.cooltuna.com/poser/downloads.html

Hi,rockets, i'm sure Jaager will answer, but i think you get it. The key to Jaager's instructions is to use them yourself, one step at a time, very carefully. Mostly he's telling you how to cut and paste text lines here and there, and use Morph Manager 4 to copy full body morphs used (FBMs). That's really all it is. Once you "get it," the whole operation will take about 10 minutes, max. If you are just doing the faces, *go download my Terez free character face* and look at what's in it in your EditPadLite editor (BTW--once i got EditPad, i never used WordPad or NotePad again; it's just that much better!). It's a bunch of plain ASCII unformatted text with brackets, { and }, used to group things that belong together. i combined some non-standard morphs and put their deltas into the HeadMonkey morph target, as you will see. The rest are just face pose stuff, plus and adjustment for Vicki's cross-eyedness, eyebrow color, and eyebrow transmaps. You can really put good stuff into the face pose. P.S. What are "deltas?"(Someone who knows better may correct me.)You know that the vertices in the Poser bodies are points in virtual space and all have (x,y,z) coordinates. When we move the points while morphing, they change their coordinates. Delta is mathematical shorthand for "changes," or "differences," (difference -> d, get it?) so the deltas are how much a point has changed from the original mesh. When you look at Terez's delta for her combined morph, you'll see a number which indexes the particular points, and then a triplet which tells Poser how much to move the point in the x,y, and z directions.

Melanie, A face pose is THE way to share a character face that uses V2 morphs. Nan sells character faces for V2. The characters are formed by the file she supplies being a FC2 pose that sets the actual morph dials in your copy of V2. If you do not have V2, it is useless to you. Now her characters also include outside morphs. Until recently, it was necessary for the user to get these outside morphs in the a CR2 himself. A MOR donor just does this part automatically. Her files also position the eye balls and set up the eyebrows, with textures and transmaps - all at once. Little steps adding up to a big result.

Oh, my goodness, this is all so technical. I think my little pre-menopausal brain might explode! :) Jaager, so, if I understand you correctly, a face file (fc2) is OK to share, because others have to already own the V2 or M2 figures so the pre-existing dials will be present in order for the fc2 to work? I was assuming this might be the case, but I'm still not completely clear on this. I don't have any faces that are good enough to share at the present time, but if I should accidentally hit on some fabulous face, does that mean I could share the fc2 file without infringing on copyright or passing on illegal data? Sheesh, I just can't seem to grasp it; it's all so complicated. Forgive my denseness. :) Jaager, I really appreciate your patience. Melanie

Jaager and nfredman, I really appreciate the help. I'm going to have to sit back and digest this for awhile...I'm kinda in the same boat as Melanie. I really want to learn how to do this, it just takes me longer than some for the light bulb to come on. LOL Like Ron, I was just going to put a character in freestuff, but didn't want to infringe on any rules. Also if I were to put the whole character there as I saved her she would be 22MB's and I wouldn't want to subject that on unsuspecting people...

Hmmm... the tutorials at Poser Arcana explain it a little better (MAT and MOR Poses), ... we're all trying to condense a lot of information into a little bit of space.

Oh, and DELTAS are the information that makes up a morph target. They are the fundamental differences between the location of vertices within one geometry file and the location of vertices within another geometry file of equal number of vertices.

If you take out the Detlas, the morph doesn't work... if you put back IN the Deltas, the morph works... that's the simple concept behind DELTA Injection, which does this using NON-Distributable Pose Files, to make VERY-Distributable character files..

Ron 'DraX' DeFreitas,
3D-CC Database Administrator & Programmer

---

The 3D Comic Collective - "Where Comics Come to Life in 3Dimensions"
http://www.3d-cc.com

Ron, MOR donor (DELTA injection) is not necesssarily a legal way to distrubute a morph. If it is a combination morph that uses V2 or M2 morphs in the mix, this is still not legal. The combination of setting the V2/M2 morphs with a pose and using the MOR donor to supply the outside is legal. (Provided the authors of the outside morphs allow this)(Trav's morphs and a commercial product- still not legal and short of a commercial license, no way to do it)

Melanie, you have it. A face pose is safe to share. Rockets, you want to see a method to supply a whole character, head and body - one file, one click - DAZ legal, let me know. You tell me what it involves, and I will tell you what I need. But certainly not 22 megs. The largest it would be after I am done is 1 meg and this would do a whole body, with scaling, and textures applied, if those are involved. You just need a separate CR2 to provide any clothing or hair if this is also involved.

OK, folks at this point I'm not even sure if I'd have anything worth sharing, even for free. For a brief few days I fantasized about creating an obscure super hero to enter in the 3DCC challenge. But I frankly got bogged down in trying to make the intricate costume which was actually composed of rags! Now isn't that ironic?! Then I wondered if I figured out all that, if I'd get stuck with some legalities or some arcane, intricate process to ensure that copyrights don't get violated. In the end, all this work and hassle is just not worth it. Hell if I had anything to offer, it would be for FREE, and there is no way I'd pay to give something away. There is no way I'd bang my head on the wall trying to figure all this out. Frankly I have better things to do with my time and energy than loading some CR2 (or other) file into a text editor, and fumbling about. Now, having said all this, let me ask what might be a really dumb question. Do all these concerns apply if I'm working on a character based on Michael version ONE?! (My Ragman and Marlin characters originate from Michael 1). How about Vicky 2?! Do we have the same concern about morphs?! It looks more and more like I'd be lucky enough just to create a few characters of my own, for my personal use. If others found them interesting, they might be able to see my cartoons.... but that would be the extent of it all.

Ron (Knights), If what you do is restricted to M1 resources, you can provide it as a CR2, but why do we need Smile et al. over and over? You can use methods to do the same thing that do not make such large files. V2 and M2 are their morphs. Anything that you do that allows someone who does not have either of these figures to benefit from the use of their morphs is a betrayal of DAZ. You are on the wrong tack as regards hacking CR2/PZ2 etc. It is an opportunity and not a chore. It frees up possibilities. It gives you a level of independence. Not only can you hack the Poser files, you can hack the geometry files. Someone with a brain like RainMan could probably create a character just using EditPad.

Jaager, I think you either totally don't know what I'm doing, or totally don't understand me. Last I knew I never told anyone the size of my Marlin character file. I have never looked. I'm nowhere even ready to think of sharing him. If you look at the top of this thread, I am the one who started the thread, due to my concerns for the legalities involved. Now I wouldn't do that if I wanted to rip anyone off, would I!? As for the work or talent involved: You have your abilities and I have mine. You know what amount of work you're willing to do, and I know what I'm willing to do. I may be a computer nerd, and good at many computer related things. I stink when it comes to anything I call "programming." That includes editing cr2,s etc etc. You and others are very good at explaining things, and it shows. But I get to the second paragraph, and am hopelessly lost. I know the kind of effort it would take to even begin to understand the principles involved. I know if might be necessary to pay money to buy a program that would ensure the mission is accomplished. I have better things to do with my time and money. The way I see it, if it is in someone's best interests to protect their copyrights, they should go out of their way to provide their loyal customers with the means to accomplish that goal. After all, aren't we supporting Curious Labs, DAZ, Drax, et all by buying the product?! Drax has done his part with the Delta Pose technology. I even figured how to handle that in relation to a character or two. If someone or some company is not willing to do their part, then some people will either decide not to share their creations, or violate "the rules." Just remember, I and others are customers. We deserve to be treated with respect, and not hit with a bunch of heavy-handed rules, and impossible procedures. Obligations are a two-way street....

Daz and Curious Labs have absolutely no obligation to make it easier for us to distribute the things we make from their products. After all, they got our money when we bought the stuff in the first place :) Here's what I'll do... I'll make up template MOR files for Vicki 2 and Michael 2, and I'll do up a tutorial on how to use them. Very basic, but with enough information for you to create at least one character that you can sell or give away without infringing on any copyright. How does that sound? I know Jaager is brilliant at this stuff, as is Drax (my hero s) so I'll leave the more indepth stuff to them to explain :) It will probably take me a week to get organised but I'll announce it here if you all think I should. Ron, it's something you really should learn how to do. Trust me when I tell you it's not hard. Once you do it once it'll be simple from then on :) And I will be using Editpad Lite for the tutorial, so if you don't have, go grab it now. It's a fantastic program....wayyyyyyy easier than Word and Notepad. Best of all it's FREE! Post #9 by thgeisel has the link :)

Can you understand I still need to learn some very basic skills when it comes to even dealing with Poser?! I barely have a handle on lights, and other things I forgot. Now I'm supposed to know MAT, CR2 edits, etc. On top of that, my bold new career move went down the toilet. Pardon me, while I disconnect from reality for a bit.

Ron, I think I understand what you are trying to do. You seem to be setting limits that freeze your options. (This is something I well understand, but in my case, it is not vitual.) DAZ provides a method, because it requires a little effort, you seem to reject it. We are trying to explain what is allowed. We did not make up the rules, we just understand them. It is just the way it works. We are not trying to make you do anything. We are trying to open a door for you. Show you new possibilities. The "programing" involved in this is about as much effort as you used to type your post, especially if you had typed it in EditPad and pasted it here. If it required that you type it in Assembler , I could understand the reluctance. Having learned what "programing I know on a Mini, none of this is programing as I understood it: "Take the contents of register 5 and add it to register 7, divide register 1 by register 7, ....." What we are doing, is using a peavy to wrench Poser to do things it was not designed to do.

I wanna be in Xena's boat! I was lost like most of the rest of you when I first started looking into this whole thing... but Xena is right... it really isn't all that complicated when you get right down to it... and it's well worth knowing... if for no other reason than it simply demystifies Poser a bit... it really isn't magic... it just looks like it! I sat down over the course of a weekend and figured the whole thing out, much to Nan(nfredman)'s help, and Jaager's the information on Jaager's website. I will admit that I figured it out a bit backwards, but the end product is the same, and if you were to look at my file, next to Nan's or Jaager's or anyone else's for that matter, they look the same... what I'm getting at is this... there's more than one way to do pretty much anything... and it's true in this case as well... once you start looking at the text of a cr2, pz2, or fc2 file, you'll see they're almost identical, some just have more information than others... once you figure out one you can figure out any of the others.

I have no intentions of doing what is not allowed. That surely should be evident by now. I do reserve the right to dictate what I do with my own time and effort. I do know my limitations, and my own learning disabilities. I've struggled very hard with what many of you see as elementary facets of using Poser, let alone all this cr2 edit thing. There are people out there who will attest to the fact that my learning disability has been known to try the patience of more than a few. I can't get past reading the first paragraph of a very excellent explanation. Can't you understand that?! I appreciate your trying to help. I need to learn how to use all aspects of Poser, for creation, before I delve into areas that I already know are beyond my comprehension. This is also a very rough time for me personally. I just lost the job that promised to be my big break from the types of job that were slowly driving me insane. (Computer Tech related jobs.) That sucks, to put it mildly. Hell I don't even know how I'm going to get through the weekend. So, thanks for trying to help. But I just need to drop out of this whole idea. Heck, I may drop out of Poser entirely.

Cin- If we have a goal,I think we all learn "backwards". You start with what you want to do, and then figure out how to get there. And you develop the tools you need as you go. Sometimes this gets messy and inefficient. The problem with instruction is that it done from the other direction. You teach someone how to use tools that they do not see the point in learning how to use. It requires a degree of trust on the stundent's part that their time is not being wasted. It is difficult to retain information gotten by cook book methods. It is just easier to explain if it is done beginning to end, instead of end to beginning, which is the way we learned it.

MOR files vs. .cr2 files: I could hand you a written list of dials to set Vicki's morphs to get a certain character look. The list does you no good without Vicki. The list is the MOR file. All it does is tell Poser how to set the dials. The .cr2 file itself contains the dials themselves. Vicki 1 is a combination of an .obj mesh plus morphs. Vicki 2 uses the same mesh found from Vicki 1, but has additional morphs built in to the file. Because Vicki 2 is "merely" a file of morph dials, giving out the .cr2, even modified, is giving out Vicki 2 for free. Instead, you can send out the list of settings for the dials (the MOR file) and Poser will automatically set the morph dials when the MOR file is used. MAT files and MOR files are pretty intimidating to look at, but they're pretty easy to play with. I have some tutorials on MAT files which may help. http://www.fallencity.net/lore Good luck.

Jaager, I sort of 'reverse engineered' my way through it... I have Nan's realgrrls, and that was essentially what I wanted to do... so I looked at her fc2 files to see how they were put together... took the information available on your website, Nan's own tips she gave me, and said... "Okay... how do I get here then?" fumbled my way through it. The first one I did was horribly inefficient, and took me way longer than it probably needed to... but now that I know how to do it, it takes about 10 minutes, maybe a little more, maybe a little less... and this is even with adding deltas to 'inject' my own custom morph-job. It really is easier than it sounds at first though.

I'm sure it's not all that hard to do. I just want to know how to get started with it. I really appreciate everyone's input (even though I didn't start this thread) because it's been something I've been wanting to learn. I did go and grab the editpadlite and it looks like it will do the trick once I figure out what to put in it. :-) Xena I would be very interested in any tutorials you provide...I've learned a lot from reading past tut's of yours.

I think we all fumble though the first one :) It took me ages to set up the MOR file for Mike 2. He's sooooo huge.

Rockets ... working on it right now :)

Cin- thats how its done. The trick is knowing that it can be done at all. Once you know that, it is a game or a puzzle to figure it out, but one with a payoff, not just a time sink. The problem with real research is that often what you get is a dry hole. Right now, I am content to follow the scouts. Drax and Rob and Charles can cut the path, I will try to help expand it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Topsectionid=1&Sectionid=15

If you have pro-pack there is a script in freestuff that will make MAT Pose files.

As Jaager says, you either have to spend a lot of time with tutorials and a text editor, or get a program to do it for you. And even then, you still have to do some studying, if you don't know the difference between all the types of PZ2 files, you won't know what to tell the program to make for you. All "standard" types of MAT/PZ2 files can be created in a minute or so in CR2Edit, as shown in the picture. Standard MOR files have their own window, not shown. MOR donor files as discussed by Jaager are covered in this other window, but are not automated to our satisfaction yet. (Jaager, I have been sidetracked by other work, but will get back to you soon.) VERY important: if you are using a text editor, be extremely careful to preserve the formatting. Five spaces is not the same as a tab character. There is not a single line in a CR2 that starts with a space. If you do not do this, your files will not work with some tools in Poser utilities, and you run the very real risk of having your work turn to garbage, if Poser5 decides to make the wise decision of enforcing formatting. It is a lot of work writing code to check for every possible variation. Without stricter enforcement, you wind up with something like the OBJ format, it seems like every app out there writes them a different way. Even with P4, I am sent files that will not open in Poser, due to formatting errors. Many Poser crashes are related to this, and it can be very difficult to find what is wrong. DAZ recently sent me a file that someone had edited themselves, and it was such a mess it wasn't worth fixing. Dan http://www.zenwareonline.com for CR2Edit, ZenPaint, ZenTile, VueMaster and the complete line of Zenware graphics apps