Use a transparency map. Last week's DAZ freebie is still up, as of today, and is a pair of ripped monster pants for The Freak. You may want to download this as an example of how a transparency mask can be used for tattered clothing.

I'm surprised that people think there aren't enough posts in this forum. It gets about 50 new topics/day, not to mention an average of what seems to be a half dozen and more responses per message. I spend an hour or two per day just keeping up with topics of interest.

Considering that most people here are hobbyists, $250 is a lot to pay for a useful, but still somewhat niche oriented product if it's limited to swapping heads on Poser figures or if it still requires the user to bone and add joint parameters. On the other hand, if the company were to put out a full-blown Poser character creation application with built in Poser boning and joint controls, and maybe even assists for clothing creation, $250 becomes a lot more attractive. It's still pricey because it's the equivalent of buying 6-10 full-blown top commercial Poser characters. There's an appeal to build one's own characters. I'm somewhat surprised that there is no character creation software add-on for Poser yet that would simplify the process. I don't know enough about the process of creating Poser figures to know whether there are some things that can be productively automated. Creature Creator is a good starting point, but it's somewhat limited to swapping head and body parts with some minimal controls to modifying those parts. A full-fledged Poser application, for character creation, would need the abiility to create and alter morphs.

The "direct manipulation tool" worked. So that's what it's for. Usually, I have it covered up with the Parameter Dials window. I'll have to try playing with the joints because I looked at how the origins are displayed for a well behaved prop and one that isn't and, lo and behold, the joint end point, for a well behaved prop, goes to the end of that prop. The props, that have the gimbal lock (sorry, but I never heard of that before, so it would be tough to search for it) problem, have the end point close to the origin. For a prop I don't use often, using the "direct manipulation tool" is probably adequate, but it makes more sense to fix the prop's end points for something I'll use more frequently. I've been saving Dr. Geep's tutorials (thanks for making them!), but a lot of them go over my head. Sometimes, all I want to do is make drawings with Poser, not get a degree in it. Every now and then, I'm forced to crack open the manual (which often leads to more confusion) or try to see if someone else has had the problem here. This problem was a tough one to search for because I didn't even know what to call it. All I knew, for sure, was that there had to be a way to fix the problem because others had already done that with their props. Thanks for the assist.

Although I haven't had the time to try this, I imagine that anybody can cut and paste one map into another. Unfortunately, the M2/V2 and M3/V3 maps have been mapped very differently. M2/V2 cut the body like a toy model where the figure is sliced into a front half and a back half where there is a seam all the way around the body as the two halves are joined. M3/V3 essentially have their skins unravelled, split down the middle of the back. It's much easier copying a texture from V1/M1 to V2/M2 because both models had essentially the same maps with some rearrangements of where the hands and feet were located on the map. A simple Photoshop action could probably convert V1/M1 to V2/M2. Probably the same can be done between M2/V2 and M3/V3, but there's a little more work involved.

This is independent of the software and is controlled by Windows. Poser or any other program can take advantage of a two monitor setup. Basically, Windows creates a screen size that stretches across two monitors and moving the cursor off the edge of one monitor brings it onto the next as if the monitors were connected. Tools could be moved to the second monitor and provide a full screen on the other for posing. Do use a Poser memory dot to save your single monitor configuration and another for your preferred two monitor state for Poser. That way, you can go back and forth easily between the setups depending whether you want to use one monitor or two.

"I guess it will work with the bodymorphs as well, but I was just too lazy to copy all the info." I tried the body morphs and it was a lot of work. There are a few interesting ones, but the Freak and M3 body shapes are so different that they are only of marginal use. Unlike the Freak head morphs which can be cut and pasted in a couple steps to M3, the body morphs affect multiple body parts and require cutting and pasting well over a hundred times. It's well worth moving the head morphs over because it's fairly easy and the differences in heads is much less than with the body, but the body ones are a lot of work with less payoff. Half the reason for doing it was just to see that I could do it.

The Poser part of the special wasn't so special because it's cheaper at Amazon.com, but the Vue offer is nice.

Thanks, got it!

I'm at a loss to figure out how to become a full member. I go to http://www.sixus1.com/Forum/groupcp.php I click on "Join a Group" list toggle that only shows "Full Member", click on that, and nothing happens. I've tried both Netscape and IE without any results.

Attached Link: DAZ Studio Nov 5 Post

Poser 5 (at Amazon.com) is only slightly more expensive than 4 (Poser Artist) and the same as the ProPack (Poser 4+, better price at Curious Labs) for $140. I'd lean to Poser 5 for somebody that's starting out. Poser 4 figures are okay, but Poser 5 figures are better, and DAZ Millennium figures are the best. There are a lot of old free downloads (custom figure morphs, hairs, clothes, etc.) for Poser 4 figures and a lot of newer ones for the Millennium figures and surprisingly very little for the Poser 5 figures. A probably even better option, or at least one to start with, is getting DAZ Sudio since it will be free in a Beta format in December. It won't come with any models, but the $140 you save for Poser can buy you a bunch of models. DAZ has a 50% off sale for their original products till Nov 10, meaning you can get Victoria1/Michael1 for $10 each or the latest incarnations V3/M3 for $20 apiece (but really $40 each by the time you buy the morph sets for the head and body and more money for textures). V2/M2 are $20 each and include a lot of head and body morphs native to the original purchase. Something else to keep in mind is that DAZ figures come bald, naked, and without textures. Both Poser 4 and 5 come with clothing, textures, and hair for models. You've got a balancing act between your budget and your wants. If you want to be very cost conscious, buy and download V1 and M1 while they're on sale (though they were on sale at $13 before the half off sale). That will give you better figures, with lots of free community support, than Poser 4 or 5. There are tons of clothing, hairs, and textures here and at other sites for those characters (V3/M3, being newer, don't have as much available, but come with versions that have the new character heads on the older bodies to maintain compatibility with earlier clothing). When DAZ Studio comes out, play around with that and see if you can achieve the results you want. It's easy to be lulled into a false feeling that spectacular drawings can be created with Poser at the drop of a hat. It doesn't take long to do something quick and dirty by using existing poses and going for a render. Getting a truly unique drawing out of Poser, with the figure posed exactly the way you want it, getting expressions exactly as you want them, getting the lighting just right; takes hours. I don't know about anybody else, but a fully realized drawing takes me a half dozen hours of work. You may well decide that the upfront investment in time to pose a model as being too frustrating to warrant the effort and decide to stick to 2D work. Going with Studio and a couple MIL models, you're risking minimal money. Even if you want to move to Poser and get the latest Millenium models, the older ones are still usable. The bulk of the Poser drawings on the net use those figures and there's nothing wrong with them. That may be all you need. You're better off pushing those models to their limits before investing in the more expensive ones. By the time you've exhausted what V1/M1 do, there will likely be V4/M4 that are geared more to what DAZ Studio can do with them.

I think they have different names because they are different morphs unique to the Freak's oversized physical form. It's not a straight M3 import.

Is there any shortcut to copying channels? Some of the body morphs appear in 50 locations, so that's a fair amount of work to copy them one by one. Did you have a program to automate the process to make it simpler? The head morphs can be copied over with Morph Manager and worked fairly easily. Body morphs span more than one part, so it's a lot more effort copying and pasting.

So who's going to make a pose file for Freak that load all the Mike 3 morphs that he supports...? DAZ already did that. There's already an All Freak M3 Body and Head pose with the Freak morph expansion set.

If you've got M3, all his morphs should work with the Freak, so that provides a full range of expressions and facial morphs. I'm not sure, but somebody who does not own M3 might be able to buy the Freak and the M3 morph sets, without purchasing M3, to get a fully expressive Freak. The Freak morphs are specifically set up to work with Freak and add monster looks and such; Orcs, Goblins, etc.