Ok, here is the deal. You spend hours tweaking a characters face morphs. Then you apply a 3rd party pose or face file (expression)and you loose your character morphs. When I save a pose, there is a dialog asking if you want to save it with morphs or not... I mean, I avoid using some peoples poses because of this...Eric Westrays comes to mind...is there a way to avoid this? Thanks in advance

Oh, I actually have learned the answer to this one - at least for the head morphs. Use the lock actor command on the head before applying the pose. I have also read that you can use the memorize figure command to save the current settings as the default. Then if a poses changes these you can use the restore figure (for the entire figure) or restore element, for just the element (such as the head) you wish to restore. I have found using the lock actor on the head works best for me.

Load the poses onto an unmorphed figure and resave without any morph information (you are asked if you want to do this). When you load the resaved pose it won't bugger up your character.

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Well, the lock actor, memorize/restore comman, and using the unmorphed figure (such as the manicon) have been mentioned. You can also edit the pose file using a text editor (or morphmanager) to remove morph channel data. It is really easy to do with morphmanager. Open morphmanger, click on the Load File button, select pz2 as the type of File, scroll to the pose you want. Click on the More Options. Select Delete all morph targets from file, from the drop down menu. Save file.

Thanks a lot to all of you people...but why do pose creating merchands sell their poses rigged with morph data...its annoying at best and ******* at worst...if we have to go throug all this hassle to use a product that should work out of the box...or at least a they should post a warning..."using these poses will mess your character"... well, enough for the rant.

Always think ahead. You could make a character pose. Insted of ripping the morphs out of all of those poses, create one that only has your morph settings. Mat Pose Edit comes to mind for this. You'll find that 90% of the poses out there have some sort of morph data in them. Don't forget that some have joint controlled morphs that are useful for mantaining a natural looking pose. When you are done making your character, save it, then run it through MPE to make a character pose. That way you can restore the morph settings.

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I just tried it out, took about three minutes to come up with the pose. It's been a while since I used it, so it could probably be done quicker. If you don't already have it, do yourself the favor.

Message edited on: 07/07/2004 15:53

Like most computer-related things, always think, "If I do X, what will happen to my project", such as "If I that new piece of clothing, will Poser give an error about an obj file that isn't there and delete my character?" The solution: 1) Before applying ANY pose, go to Edit, then Memorize, then Figure. If the pose wrecks your character, go to Edit then Restore then figure. 2) SAVE, SAVE, SAVE. If your character is important, ALWAYS save the file before changing a pose, adding clothing, and so on. 3) Go through ALL of your poses: apply them to a stripped V2 (or M2) and then save the poses to the library without morph information. Why do merchants save pose files with morph information? Ask the merchants who do this. Ask the testers who don't catch this (or who allow it to go through, untested).

It is especially annoying when the pose is entitled "...texture only" or "MAT Pose..." or something like that. You get sucked in thinking that it won't touch your morphs. That is a good idea about locking the actor.

If you spend that much time on creating a face, I sure as heck would think you'd want to save it when you get it right before you do anything else. Not only to avoid the problem you mention, but to avoid all sorts of other bad things that could happen - program crash, computer lock up, power outage. When you get the face down save it to a file! Either save the whole figure, use a pose dot, memorize the figure, create a morph from the head (my current mode of operation), or save your face in the faces library (the quickest method I think). The same thing has happened to me many times before, but after a second of cursing the pose maker I just hit the face library and put the face right back on. Hope this helps, Unzipped

but why do pose creating merchands sell their poses rigged with morph data...its annoying at best and ******* at worst... Because they don't know any better, and the tester didn't use a morphed figure to test the poses. If this is one of the Unimesh characters, the pose problem is because the poses were made with the actual figure instead of with the Blank (that's part of what the Blank is for). bonni

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It's really annoying when this happens. It's partly a Poser design problem - there should be a distinction between expression morphs and face shape morphs. What I do is this: after creating the character's face, with no expression, spawn a new morph target for the head. Then blank all the shape morph channels (in the case of V3, strip them out) and turn the new morph to 1.0. The character is now protected from all rogue pose files.