You can certainly save a figure with your new custom morph in it. But you can also export the morph as a morph injection using Poser, under File->Export->Morph Injection. I typically do it using Netherworks' Creator's Toybox, which has a tool called PMD Pose Express (which is for saving morph injections, not poses as the name misleadingly suggests!) I make custom morphs with the morph brush all the time, on both figures and clothing, and I've had no trouble injecting those morphs into new copies of the figures. I've also used "copy morphs from" to copy custom morphs from one figure to another. So yes, it's possible!

Whenever I get a new figure (usually from Nursoda!), I load it into Poser and start organizing and renaming dials as needed, with the goal of preparing a custom "starter" for that figure. If the figure doesn't already have dials to move both eyes at the same time, then I create those on the Right Eye actor. (I suppose I could do it on the Head actor, but I've developed the habit of selecting the Right Eye for all things eye-related from using Karina's Sasha-16 version of V4.)

Here's how I've been doing it:

• with the Right Eye selected, I choose Spawn Morph Target from the Object menu and name it Both Eyes-Side to Side
• on the new morph dial, I click "Edit Dependencies" and then start "Teaching" the dial to move the eyes all the way to the left at -1, all the way to the right at 1, and to be zeroed at 0
• repeat the process for Both Eyes-Up and Down

So far it's worked fine for me, but now I'm wondering if there's some kind of functionality I'm missing by doing it that way? If I want one eye to be turned more or less than the other one, I can still do that by just using that eye's rotation dials.

I also created my own version of the eye-beam props Karina includes with Sasha-16 (which on her are called "the looks"), and I set these up for the new figure as well. I put the dial for controlling them (which I call Extend Eyebeams) also on the figure's Right Eye, using the same method as above. (On Sasha-16, you can activate "the looks" on either eye.) The purpose is to help you get a better idea what the figure's eyes are actually looking at, and the results can sometimes be quite surprising!

I just did a quick render to illustrate the eye beams, after turning "Visible in Camera" on (ordinarily it's off, so that the beams are only visible in Preview, not a render). The screenshot below also shows the dials I created on the Right Eye, in this case on Nursoda's Hein figure. Many thanks to Karina for coming up with this idea for Sasha-16!

willyb53 posted at 11:58AM Thu, 02 April 2020 - #4385120

A fully loaded V4 with external geometry still will take up 100's of megabytes of memory for each copy

Whenever I see references to figures taking up "memory," I always wonder: are you talking about hard disk space or RAM? I might be wrong about this, but I don't think there's a one-to-one correlation between MBs used on disk and amount of MBs taken up by RAM. At least, I've never seen that correlation in all my years of studying the Activity Monitor on a Mac!

ssgbryan posted at 1:31AM Tue, 21 April 2020 - #4385234

When I make a character, I first strip out all of the unused morphs (1 click). Then I use the "Dials to FBM" command to make a final FBM (1 click). Then I strip out the PBMs that made up the FBM (1 click). Make an injection of the FBM (1 click). Load FBM into a base mesh with only expressions and it is done (1 click).

Now he/she is less than 100Mb.

This is a bit off-topic for the thread, but I've always wondered what might be lost by consolidating all V4 character morphs using the "Dials to FBM" tool (which I think is part of the Wardrobe Wizard suite of useful tools unrelated to wardrobes!?) I tried it a few years ago, and I found that some things (most likely corrective morphs and expressions) didn't work as I expected them to b/c they were, apparently, depending on some specific character morphs (most likely Aiko4) that had been removed after I did the "dials to FBM" thing. So I haven't tried it again.

But otherwise I do something similar to what you describe, in that I have a fully loaded V4 (a Sasha-16 version) I use as a "starter" for designing a character, so I can fiddle with all the morphs to see what works best. She has A4, G4, S4, Elite, Aged, Faerime, Facial Expressions, Distinctive Features, and probably a few more, but not She-Freak or Creature b/c I haven't yet had a need for those. Once I've settled on the new character's face and body shape, I save a pose file with the shape info and take notes on which morphs I used so that I can inject only those into a base V4. Then I apply the pose file and save the new character (averaging around 90-120 MBs, depending on which morphs I used).

I've been hesitant to go one step further and condense all the shape morphs into one "dials to FBM" solution b/c I don't want to limit the figure's functionality. Have you not found that to the be the case? I suppose I could give it another try, at least for more minor character, as I continue tweaking my main characters' shapes indefinitely! (and I sometimes use shape dials to deal with pokethrough or weird pose-related issues)

ockham posted at 6:12PM Sun, 29 March 2020 - #4384561

The discussion about the Material Room (obviously!) got me thinking... You have to use the Material Room all the time, so it's not really a feature or 'option'. BUT: Some people use shaders creatively to do most of the work in a scene, including animation. Others just set colors and images. The former group is treating the Material Room as a feature.

Poser's Material Room is definitely a feature to me b/c of all the nifty things you can do with various nodes. I've spent a lot of time studying its features (courtesy of resources by ArtBee, D3D, BB, and others), and even though I have access to other apps with faster/better render engines, I stick with Poser (and Firefly) because I'm not interested in investing that kind of time into learning a different material system!

Snarlygribbly posted at 6:22PM Sun, 29 March 2020 - #4384390

The Snow Machine code was incorporated into my EZMat script as a plugin.

I have a script named: SSM2MAC.py, last updated 03-17-12, and it works just fine on in Poser Pro 11 on my Mac. It took me a while to figure out that the Snow Machine script that was available via a Wacro was only for Windows users, and that I just needed to replace it with the one Snarly provided for Mac users. It's a lot of fun to use!

hornet3d posted at 7:52PM Tue, 24 March 2020 - #4383632

I think the other point is that it takes quite a while to understand a figure well enough to get the best out of the figure, another reason why I understand why so many have stuck with V4. It must be really hard to gain that level of understanding if you are jumping ship each time a new figures is created.

I think that's a very good point. I didn't even start using V4 until a few years ago, because up until then I'd invested all my time in pushing the limits of what I could do with Cookie and Krystal and a few other toon figures. I found V4 confusing and frustrating at first, but I persisted when I realized I could do so much more with her than I would've been able to do with the toons. Now I know her so well (or rather, the Sasha-16 version of her) that it's somewhat jarring to load any other human figure and find myself without all the helpful dials and features I'm used to, organized in a way I'm familiar with. (I can't wait until Karina releases an improved version of M4!!)

I've also grown very familiar with V4's geometry and rigging as well as her material zones and textures, so I feel comfortable making various kinds of modifications. I don't feel like going through that whole learning process again, with another "base" figure (by which I mean the kind of figure designed to be transformed into multiple characters.)

Nursoda's figures don't work like V4, but they're not designed to be "base" figures, so they're also not very complicated -- certainly not the way the more recent V4 competitors are. And I'm so delighted to have such charming and stylized characters to play with that I don't mind putting a little effort into making them more usable (though I wish more of them shared the same UV templates for eyes and mouth).

The fact that some Poser users may not feel the need for a new "base" human figure in no way suggests that the marketplace for Poser content is doomed, as my own purchase history can well attest! There's so much more to buy beyond clothes, hair, and skin textures, unless, I suppose, your only goal is to make portraits!

For more "realistic" adult females, my go-to is V4 S-16 (aka Sasha). Karina has made the figure incredibly easy to use, and I have more morphs, skin textures, apparel, and hair for her than I'll ever need. Plus, I just like her better than my other options.

If she needs company, I use M4 and/or K4.

For more "fantasy" figures, my go-to's are Mavka and Nursoda's people (esp. Vila, Fehn, Telka, Aina, and Hein, but I love them all!) I also really like Aiko3, Maisie, and Star but haven't had as much occasion to use them.

When I first got into Poser, it was all about Cookie! And, to a lesser extent, Krystal, Koshini, Ichiro, and, of course, Chip.

I have more than 20 human figures in my runtime, not counting Nursoda's people or the ones that come with Poser, so when I say that V4/Sasha is my favorite, it's not for lack of trying others!

KarinaKiev posted at 6:57PM Tue, 24 March 2020 - #4384216

Have you also tried it with SASHA's original shaders?

The shaders Karina included with Sasha are quite good! If you want to use a different skin texture, I'd just swap out the image maps in his shader and leave the rest alone. Swapping out image maps is easy to do with Netherworks MATWriter Panel or D3D's Extended Shader Manager.

I also highly recommend using EZSkin, but you do need to learn a bit about what it's doing (and what you can adjust or modify) to get the most out of it.

You might also find it useful to set up your preferred mouth and eye materials (as MT5's or MC6's with only the relevant zones selected) so that you can apply those after applying a new character material package, to get them back to the way you want. I used the textures that came with Girl4 to set up my eye and mouth defaults, but if I want a different iris, I just switch out the maps on the Iris and Pupil material zones.

I've used all the features listed in the original post, although I use the animation timeline only for setting up different "shots" on each keyframe, rather than for making an actual animated scene.

For setting up clothing (custom-made or converted), I use either the Fitting Room or the Setup Room, which I also use to set up rigged props.

For making morphs of clothing, figures, and props, I mainly use the Morph Brush but have also used Magnets, Bullet Physics, Wind Force, and the Cloth Room, as well as an external modeler (Cheetah3D for Mac).

For renders, I always use Firefly, for many reasons (performance, micro-displacement, compatibility with older content), but the main reason is that I prefer the way they look. I use IDL maybe half of the time, and I rarely use SSS unless something in the scene really needs it. (Most of my 4k final renders take fewer than 30 minutes, and I like it that way!)

I use the Depth Cue feature of Poser’s Atmosphere fairly often but rarely use Volume b/c it renders so slowly.

I'm unlikely to use the Hair Room for actual human figure hair, but I recently used it to create a winter coat for the HWHorse and can imagine using it for other furry or grassy purposes.

I've never used the Face Room because the figures I use (V4, M4, Nursoda's folks, Mavka, etc.) aren't supported. I’ve also never used Walk Designer or Talk Designer b/c I don’t do animations.

I spend the most time in the Material Room, mainly because nearly every item I load needs its materials fixed or updated, esp. the specular components. But I also like tweaking materials for different results, so sometimes I even do final renders from there rather than the Pose Room.

Here are the scripts I use on a near-daily basis: Netherworks’ Creator’s Toybox, Mat Writer Panel, and Dial Manager; EZSkin; Scene-Fixer 2016; and BB’s "Shift Nodes Home" wacro.

I use Poser every day, and for the most part I’m very pleased with everything I can do with it!

Nice selections! I think I "liked" and possibly commented on nearly all of these!

ssgbryan posted at 2:39AM Mon, 02 March 2020 - #4382251

Poser does have a search function. Most vendors, however use insane naming conventions that keep the search function from working properly.

I have never used the Poser library's "Search" function b/c it's so much faster and easier to search using the Finder (which can do simple searches as well as more complex combinations, like all PNGs with the word "chair" in the filename added within the last 2 months). If I control-click on an item in the library, I get a "Show in Finder" option, making it super easy to navigate to content that way.

As for naming conventions, I just rename everything to whatever makes the most sense to me! I also assign my own Finder tags to the preview images for various items, like Shoes-Female, Desks, Steampunk, or whatever. I'm pretty sure you can do advanced searching and tagging in Windows Explorer as well?? My thought is: why depend on Poser (or any application) to organize and search my content, when my computer's OS already excels at those tasks?

A. Like @Ghostship, I have only two runtimes: Poser 11 Content (stuff from the install, w/ no customizations -- and hardly ever used) and My Poser Content (for everything else, from purchased items to freebies to items I've made myself). This is my main runtime, and the Libraries section is extensively organized using my own folder and subfolder system as well as color-coded folder icons and Finder tags (so I can quickly find, for example, all dresses or all dining tables).

I tried multiple runtimes years ago, but I found them a pain to navigate and a waste of disk space, as I ended up with lots of geometry and texture duplicates. Having the ability to extensively customize what I want in each of the main Libraries folders has resolved the anxiety I used to feel when trying to find things that were installed wherever the vendor thought they should go, and I hope Poser never locks users into a rigid library structure!

shante posted at 2:51PM Thu, 03 October 2019 - #4365211

I need to find another computer and I heard from a Mac tech at the SuperStore that since I work with Higher end apps like PhotoShop and Poser etc., it would be best to get an iMac instead. Do any of you Mac users here concur or disapprove?

I'll send you a PM with more info, but for anyone else viewing this thread, just wanted to say that the 2019 MacBook Pro w/ upgraded options is plenty powerful. See this post on another thread, where I described my system.

raven posted at 2:42PM Thu, 03 October 2019 - #4365170

Also, I'm not downloading a 1.2gb file for a readme

Exactly! If the problem is that we can't do such large downloads often, then how does doing a large download solely to view the readme help with that problem?

The Readme (or a change log) should be available as a link to a text file, the way they are on Renderosity product pages, so that we can check out what's changed in the newest version and THEN decide if we want to download it (or wait for the next update).

I appreciate frequent app updates, but I just don't have enough bandwidth to spare to download 1+ GB files only to find that the only thing updated was the location of library folders!

In 5+ years I've used Poser on a Mac, I've never had an installer wipe out my existing default Poser Content runtime. The Smith-Micro Download Manager never did. It would just install whatever was new or newly updated. If I'd renamed any of the original folders or files, then the originals would be installed again without affecting the renamed versions. The 11.2 update from Bondware did the same thing.

As for the additional content, I unzipped those folders on a networked USB drive and installed the content by dragging the Runtime folder onto the default Poser 11 Content folder and choosing "Merge" (rather than "Replace"). That's basically how I install purchased, freebie, or custom-made content as well, except that I do that in a Runtime in a separate "My Poser Content" folder.

If you ever launch Poser and find that the library can no longer find any of your runtimes, you just need to use the little books with a + symbol icon to add them back.