Ok Thanks. Sorry to accuse of removal. I suppose it was a "general" post less relevant to Poser. Thank you.

L

Hi Bob,

Yeh I finally worked that out but thanks for confirming it.  Now to find a quick and easy way to zero the hundreds of morphs without laboriously going through each one. I find it utterly ridiculous that Poser itself  doesn't  appear to even have a utility which simply says "zero all morphs" and then "restore previously zeroed morphs to previous state". I know there are third party apps which will do this, but the more I get into Poser 7 the more I see it is just as clunky as Poser 4.

I know it has a "restore element"  and "restore figure" but it's not restoring a zero morph situation, it seems to be just restoring the last saved to memory morphs.

Thanks again for your patience and help!

Leonardis

HELP!! I tried the magnet on the head and it does indeed narrow it very successfully, and doesn't distort the view in another plane. BUT>>>BUT>>>> I feel stupid but cannot get it to work as a morph target. From what I've been reading, you highlight the body part (in this case the head) then "spawn morph target", name it and it should appear in the head params list. But then you should be able to delete the magnet. When I do this the morph disappears from the list!

Furthermore if I spin the dials on the spawned morph (from the original magnet), it not only alters the width (good) but also changes the whole face back to the default Vicky (bad)!

How do I spawn a morph target from the magnet so that:

1. It appears in the ordered list of Head morphs, not as an " extra" in the "other" list.
2. I can then delete the magnet and let the morph carry on working.
3. Once the moprh is spawned how do I make it JUST alter the head width as planned and NOT alter all the accumulated morphs I've adjusted on the rest of the face.

Sorry if I'm being a bit thick here. All the tutorials I've read say "spawn the morph" NOT by highlighting the magnet but by highlighting the body part the magnet acts upon (in this case the head). But when I do that the morph alters the whole head as though ALL the morphs I applied are being changed, rather than just the width of the face.

I'd be grateful for some guidance and sorry to trouble you. Thank you.

Leonardis

HI again Bob: yes all understood. The key is in the mag zone. I think this will work. I have looked at the Z-toon tutorial too (many times) and it's a superb tutorial. But I don't think it will work with just the face and the magnet road is I think the easiest option. Thanks again for your excellent advice, and for the magnet tutorial which is excellent too!

Leonardis

hborre: It is most definitely not a focal length issue in this particular case, and I do realise that the default focal length tends to distort anyway. But thanks for that point.

English Bob: Thanks for that advice! OK so OVERALL scaling retains proportions whatever direction, that's useful to know. But individual X part adjustments do distort. I confirm that must be the case because it is what I am seeing. I am not sure how I can use magnets to slim down the enitre face. I assume I need two magnets, one on each side of the face that "push" the whole side of the face in from both directions. Am I on the right track?

Cheers,

Leonardis

Hi Pagan Artist,

Thanks for helping. I have it installed to Poser 7's main runtime. I'm pretty sure it is in the right place because the main structure is similar to V3 and M3, and although I have other runtimes v4 installed itself to C;Poser and all the expected folders are showing up in C:Poser 7Runtimeetc etc

Here is the structure I see for V4 4.2. If you see anything missing or in the wrong place please let me know:

V4 obj files are in Poser 7runtimegeometries (same as V3)

In Poser 7 runtimelibrariespose there is a DAZ! folder with Michael 3, Victoria 3, V4 and V4 to V3 main folders.

** Inside that V4 folder it is completely different from the V3 structure, where everything is arranged under two folders: Head and Body.
**
In the V4 structure there is a long line of folders all named with the individual body and face parts, inside of which are pz2 files. Also in the list of folders is BODY, bodyMorphs, Head, DELTAS and not in a dedicated folder are various other what look like grouping and heading pz2 files.

In the  V4++ DELTAS folder I notice there are very few large delta pz2 files. Those that are there are FBM like "young" or "pearfigure" ; the rest are small PBM deltas.

In poser 7 V4.2 loads fine. The MAT textures load ok. The base morphs seem to load and the v4++ INJ icon causes about a ten second hard disc loading. As I say eariler, only ONE morph loads at a time. But it doesn't work. In fact the only morph that works is a base morph "Male".

Thanks in anticipation of any help anyone can give!

Leonardis

Oops, forget the Png issue. I just spotted that the preferences in Poser had "use text if folders exceed 100". Unticking this now shows the png previews.

However, the V4.2 morphs are not working at all. I did run the .bat file which I believe initialises the pz2 files. All the deltas and pz2's appear to be in the right folders. It is not made clear whether I can run the "Base" morphs and ++ Morphs at the same time or whether I have to REM the base ones first. IN any case I tried all combinations. There is something wrong here. I see that in the Pose folder for V4 there are grouped morphs but these are not appearing the the Poser 7 V4 pose section, nor is now any individual morph having the slightest affect on the figure.

Clearly V4.2 is not installed properly. I've now uninstalled and re-installed three times and no difference. It's a waste of time trying again until I know what's going wrong. Any help on this would be gratefully received.

Thank you.

Leonardis

Quote - Did you try adjusting the shadow-cameras?

Answering the other posts including the link to the tutorial, for which thanks: Yes I have come to realise that the key is setting the shadow cam very accurately, or using multiple spots with narrow cones pointing at the individual objects needing an accurate depth mapped shadow.  I hadn't realised before how important this is. One good thing about Poser 7 is that, on my now more powerful computer, it seems to render in Firefly a lot quicker than Poser 5 and 6, so I expect I will use this method more in the future.

But it's a shame that depth mapped shadows are a bit hit and miss in this regard.

Leonardis

Quote - Image fuzzy? ... Try clicking on it ... ;=]

Works pretty good in Poser 6 for me.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Hi Dr Geep. I've learned a lot from your excellent tutorials over the years, so this is a good opportunity to say thank you. But I'm surprised you haven't seen any misaligned shadows. Maybe you are rendering with Firefly and ray tracing. When I do the problem doesn't arise, but sometimes I prefer Poser 4 type rendering, especially when there is less time available and a simple render is needed. So, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it is with Mapped shadows that it occurs.

Unless I very very carefully setup a shadow light camera and tweak it to a very precise angle and coverage the shadows are nearly always non-aligned. I can't post an example at the moment because I am not at home. What I don't quite understand is that an "infinite" light is meant to emulate the sun, and you'd have to travel a very large distance to see a different alignment of shadowing from the sun. So it surprises me that in a relatively small room the shadows are way off unless you focus the shadow cam very tightly on the objects you want shadowed.

It seems from other posts that this is an inherent fault with renders which are based on non ray traced shadows. Or have I missed something?

Leonardis

L Analyze the clothing to the default supported figure first. Delete both the figure and the clothing from the scene. Load default figure and apply morphs. Load previously analized clothing and then use the convert to Figure option. If the clothing has body handles or any other special morphs you wish to keep: Do not use the Conver to Figure, use Advanced, Unwelded ungrouped option. Not finished... You will then have to take the clothing into the Setup Room, do nothing then exit. tedious part: You will have to use the Joint editor and toggle all of the body parts on and off or of and on. Best to read Phil's tut on this part. when all of that is done Save the clothing!!! Final step, conform and adjust if needed. Final note: If you saved your morphed figure it probably has a unique .obj name. In order to use it with WW you will have to rename that .obj to the exact name of the supported figure. When I do that I create another folder under the original and place the morphed obj ther, then rename. don't forget to edit the morphed figure's cr2 to point to the new .obj.  

Well thanks for that. Goodness gracious though...what a palava!! One lives in hope that software will appear (and I am happy to pay a premium price for it), that takes all those circuitous processes away.

Leonardis

*"FIrst... Leonardis, can you point me to someof your products? I'd like to veiw your PDF files if possible since they may prove instructive (seriously!) but I can;t find any of your product here. A link aould be helpful. "

You won't see Poser made addons from me because I am not (yet) doing any. I was referring to simulation software of another kind and if you would kindly PM me I would be happy to give you a direct link to some PDF files we produce for our customers.

*"I do try to include useful tips in my readme;s including some of the rendering settings I use, but I certainly don;t write a booklet for fairly straight forward conforming clothing... Perhaps I;m wrong in this, I;ll wait to see what developes as others speak up on the subject."

I'm not suggesting a huge or unnecessary amount of guide material, and I don't know much about your particular products, but when dealing with morphs and magnets then even for an experienced user things can get very trying. I recognise this is a basic and long standing flaw in Poser and to some extent Studio too. But to me the whole point of addon software is to take some of the workload off the user, and to that extent I think (and this won't be a popular view) that most products on Renderosity are far too inexpensive, probably due to the vast amount of stuff available to a limited customer base. I would much rather that the average addon was twice as expensive but twice the work went into making them as flawless as possible and providing comprehensive support and tutorials.

I think the whole culture of Poser addons is predicated upon quantity rather than quality. I have been developing a unique character which relies on scaling variations as much as morphs, because morphs alone cannot substantially create the figure I am after. But I have held back because I want it to be as perfect as it can possibly be. But that is my luxury because I do this for fun and no a living. Nevertheless if the quality of Poser addons is to be improved I think developers need to start upping their standards and to start also providing more variation on the doll-like creatures which V3 and V4 seem to encourage.

Leonardis

Quote - ^^ you realize you can just re-fit the original item to your new, morphed figure...

Do you mean you can re-conform the "wardrobed" item and it will fit the morphed figure rather than return back to the default V30-fit? Please can you explain and confirm this. Thank you.

L

Quote - Morph Magic does a great job of importing character morphs to clothing. PhilC's Wardrobe Wizard does a great job of converting clothing to morphed characters. I agree instructions are sparse. I don't know about most purchased items, because I go for the free stuff so as not to spend a lot of money. I'd expect pretty thorough instructions on a commercial product.

Well I don't want to pick on Phil here, because he is one person that DOES make efforts to provide really detailed tutorials on his software. However I have not once ever used Phil's Wardrobe Wizard to any good effect. This software converts the clothes to an un-adjustable, static piece of clothing and if I drift away in scaling or morphs from very near default the clothes are torn, doscombobulated, or corrupted. Sorry Phil!

Leonardis

Quote - I agree that the animation support in Poser is sub par. I think there are numerous reasons:
...snip

Creating a good animation app is REALLY REALLY HARD. Part of the difficulty (non-resizable windows aside) is mapping what goes on mathematically behind the scenes to an intuitive interface in the front. Poser gives you access to a lot of the guts you need to do animation - but nobody likes working with guts. Guts are messy. But for programmers they are easy - just put 'em out there and let the users struggle up the learning curve. This at least provides a powerful solution, even if it's one that's not easy to learn or convenient to use.

Quote - Yes, but that's a bit like proposing that Photoshop is acceptable written and presented in machine code, with the user having to write hex commands to increase brightness or contrast. The whole point of a usable programme, however modest, is that the user is presented with CONTROLS which transfer the usability to the customer, otherwise why bother. Software like this should provide a user interface that really IS intuitive, and that includes commands and macros for doing commonly used functions, which for instance the walk designer singularly fails to do.

It is in my view a myth that software has to be difficult to use in order to use in depth. A great example of usable software is the award winning Sibelius, which takes the drudgery out of scoring and allows the composer to get on with that skill. Before Sibelius (which is not by the way particularly expensive) composers were persuaded that no software could ever help them without learning the mechanics of software based notation, as demonstrated by scoring software prior to Sibelius's appearance. The key to Sibelius's success is the intelligence of the designers behind it, not its cost or price.

Leonardis

Quote - personally, I think the slogan is misleading:
"The premiere 3D Animation and Figure Design Solution"
Well that was my original point really....that Poser cannot get away with such poor animation tools with a title like that! And yet it does, presumably because its users have sheepishly got used to accepting this fact.

I never proposed that Poser should be perfect for its price, nor was I really suggestion infinite undo's literally, but certainly enough to make having them worthwhile, and that means a great deal more than 1.

A simple animation enhancement for instance would be a similar tool to the static symmetry tools, like left to right, swap left and right and so on. This would greatly help walking animations. Yes e-frontier, the body does often move symmetrically! Or perhaps they hadn't noticed.

Leonardis