All I wanted to do was upload some free morphs to FreeStuff. I sent Patrick Martin a copy of the new MTs a couple days back and got his permission to release them (Patrick is the original auteur of the Kaz Hair package--it's definately worth the price, and I'm hoping to give the community six more reasons to purchase his product). But--after discovering that there IS a way to construct a usable mesh file from a "squished" morph--I felt enormous pangs of Catholic guilt at the prospect that I may be inadvertantly handing Patrick's meshes over to the community for free. So, I looked at the DAZ site to see how to package the morphs in an acceptable manner (which is by including them in a .hr2 file that does NOT include the original mesh--just a reference to where it is stored in the Geometries folder). Then I decided to make identical versions of the morphs for the Millenium Woman version of the hair. To make a long and meoldramatic story short--my head hurts and I'm tired of thinking--so here's the challenge! I'm posting a picture of the morphs in the forum and I'm asking you to come up with a decent (and legal) "Read Me" so I can post these babies in Free Stuff. (And no cheating by telling me to use an example of someone else's ReadMe.txt file--I want originality here.) I have nothing to offer the winner except that I will credit him as the author of the ReadMe file --but at least the morphs can be posted, relatively guilt free, in the FreeStuff section. Just to make it fun--post your sample readme files here.

Hi Freakachu. I'm sorry if I've caused any of your headache or the "Catholic guilt." I know the agony of both. I hope you understand my reply to your question in the Copyright forum was meant to explain the situation as I understood it and not to cause you grief.

I heartidly commend your commitment to protect the original author's product. It's very admirable. The way this community strives to protect each others' work is one of things I love about this place. Your efforts are a prime example of that. And I would agree that an hr2 is the best way to distribute your morphs in this case.

Sorry, I don't have a sample readme, but I just wanted to say that.

• Jeremy

Why not delete all lines with vn and f prefix in the morph-object. Means there had only the lines with v to leaved in it. In this way the morph is save because not all needed mesh-data where in it. Sorry, if you meant with "squished" the way i described. SHARKEY

Hope you can get this resolved. I would love to get the morphs for the Milwoman hair. These morphs look awesome. Just wanted to tell you that. I may break down and get the Kaz hair now.

eh? crud, now morph-squishing isn't a safe obj transfer method???! eh? um... can't come up with a readme for you, unless you state your preferences. personal use only or commercial allowed? may be redistributed with characters or not? may be redistributed with other morphs on same hair? (ie: if i make six more morphs for that hair, can i post an hr2 with yours plus mine, or do i have to strip yours out?) redistribution: are others allowed to host the file on their sites? can people email it to each other? can people have it for download or put on cd in a free collection? can they do it in a for-pay collection? um.... okay, now that your head has exploded... :/ just make sure you reiterate the readme/restructions/licensing of the kaz hair. if kaz hair is not allowed in commercial use (i expect it is, being it is a product for sale), then your morphs can't allow commercial use. stuff like that.

Those morphs are incredible! Hey you smart guys, get a good readme out soon - please. Remember when Koz came to the rescue for that model? Saved us all from broken hearts. With these morphs, our hearts will be singing! BillyGoat

bloodsong, DAZ allows sqeezed morphs for their products. I don't know how brokered products fall under this, but as far as I understand it, squeezed morphs are only cool cuz DAZ says they are...any other product, and you would need the author's approval.

There is a free plug-in for Lightwave called Points2Polys. It creates a polygon mesh out of a cloud of verticies. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, because it only works on NT machines, but from what I read, I imagine it could turn a vertex-only obj and turn it back into something close, if not exactly like, the original obj.

Well, I worked out the OBJ format for my software 3DRelief (in the store by the way plug plug plug...:) and I can tell you straight you definately could create a full blown OBJ from just the v lines. In fact 3DRelief creates the v lines first and uses them to create everything else. Squished morphs are not safe, nore are morphs embedded in a cr2, hr2 etc if the contain/define the v lines

Just a suggestion, why not let the original author distribute it in a passworded zip, then they could only let the people who bought the original product have the passwords.

So is any morph safe?

Take a look at a cr2, the original morphs in daz's cr2s show only d lines, which just gives an offset of the original geometry, if you don't know the original position then you can't recreate it, so d lines (deltas I think) should be safe, don't know how you would do them though.

pdblake is exactly right...and morphs are handled the same way in pp2's and hr2's.

Well if DAZ changes their mind about squished morphs, Morph World goes bye bye, because there is no way in hell I am loading them into .cr2's. -Trav

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12395&Form.ShowMessage=295595

As Jagaar mention in the linked thread, I would think it would be in DAZ's best interest to continue to allow it as it helps keep their products supported with add-ons.

The reason this has been a nightmare is that it's the second derivative work I've made available (the first was an A-line dress experiment that used the meshes from two of Two Swords' dresses. When I wrote my restrictions, I basically composed a read me that stated "What he said..." referring to Two Sword's restrictions on his original products). With the basic .fc2 and .pz2 files, even though the formats are proprietary, the information contained within them is original--so as with uploading a .pdf, or .swf, I didn't sweat it. The same with uploading original props in the .pp2 format (another proprietary format that just makes life a little easier for the end user downloading the new prop). However--I wrote up a simple read me that should put few additional restrictions on the original Kaz hair package (read: these morphs CAN be used in commercial works--Kaz's hair allows this use, and so do the new morphs). What it boils down to is: Use the morphs according to the agreement in its archive file, and the Kaz Hair package according to the agreement set down by Patrick Martin and DAZ. Trav--I hear ya. Packing those morphs into a .hr2 file was a pain. Zygote has been pretty careful not to use copyright restrictions to hurt the community in the past, and I suspect (or at the very least, hope) that they will continue to do things in a manner that won't punish the Poser community.

Even if you could get the mesh through v-Lines, i strongly doubt that it is very usable. You would loose all materials, all groups and the ability to pose the figure. Additionaly you do not get any of the standard morphs or an UV-Map. The product you get is just one part of the real thing - to get Victoria you would have to put the body parts together again. Even hair is nearly worthless if the textures do not match. I strongly doubt that many people will use this method to recreate the meshes. The models they would get would clearly be of a lower value then the original.

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for.
Sail out to sea and do new things.
-"Amazing Grace" Hopper

Avatar image of me done by Chidori. 

Trav, I have done it most of mine, and it does save a lot of file size. It is time consuming to do, and I only have a small fraction of what you have. You would have to have a team of volunteers, and then you would have to be explicit about which names they were to use. If, you go into ERC morphs, this is the only way to provide them in a functional state. Freakachu, It is possible to transfer your morphs from your HR2 to an existing Kaz.hr2 using MM4. MM4 does not support HR2 files, but does support HD2 files, If you change the extension on each to HD2, open in MM4 - copy, save the real one and change it back to HR2 , it is done.

bantha, you are correct that it would be difficult to completely re-engineer a figure like Victoria again. But the point I'm trying to make, is that it was DAZ's decision to allow v-line only morphs to be distributed for their products, and we need to allow other author's to make that decision for their models.

And here's another point in support of using CR2's/HR2's and PP2's as morph carriers. Those of you who have Victoria 2, try using a obj morph target on Victoria P4's head. You'll see her head shoot straight up, because the Victoria obj is taller than the Victoria P4 obj. Now, if you transfer a morph from the V2 cr2 to the VP4 cr2, you will find that the morph works correctly.