Everyone, drop whatever you're doing, head over to DAZ, and "bolster the economy." :)

I've been haunting the Daz3D site all day, refreshing my screen every hour to see if he showed up. I nearly scared a house full of guests screaming, "He's here! He's here!" Yes, he's already paid for and downloaded. Guess what I'm going to be playing with this weekend ... with a certain Orc, a dragon, and a few other items. Merry Christmas to all, especially Daz! ;-)

I JUST came back here to tell everyone that M2 was out! I just have to wait to get some cash together to buy him, but he's SO on my list! :)

The DAZ website is going to have quite a few visitors over the next few hours. I hope it can handle the traffic.

heh heh..... I was hoping I could say as well. Oh well. :grins: And I was just looking for some good armor.. hee hee

And nobody noticed the price error? 27.06 vs 21.96? Doug

I came, I rendered, I'm still broke.

Doug: whispering sotto voce Shhhh. Don't draw attention to the price error. Someone might try to fix it. Crescent, Cin-, Anzan: I'll let you all have first crack at announcing Poser 5, okay?

Probably a typo. 27.96 is 30% off. I'm going to buy him. I hope they will release the morphing clothing pack soon.

Morphing Clothing Pack is in production at this moment. Currently shooting for a release next Thursday. Will include all the conforming clothing items from the Michael Clothing Paks 1 and 2. As with the Vicky 2 Paks it will include all applicable morphs. Would be out sooner but I have an infestation of relatives this weekend and I must deal with the three word phrase most dreaded by all parents at this time of year. Used to be that meant getting out the pliers, phillips-head screwdriver and a hammer (for fine adjustments). Now I have to worry about clearing hard drive space so that I can install their computer games. A Merry Christmas to All! P.S. Children of all ages check out www.noradsanta.org. My little kids loved it last year.

Just got him, looks fantastic! I also want to thank the folks at DAZ who hung late around on a holiday weekend so we could have Micheal 2.0 for christmas. I guess there really is a Santa.

Heh... Thats right.. I got dibs on Poser 5... lol

I'm really looking forward to your clothing pack morph jbrugion! The Vicky pack became my standard almost immediately! Any plans for the odd ball stuff like the Gladiator, barbarian and bounty hunter?

I came, I rendered, I'm still broke.

Damn ! I'm gonna have to get my anatomy book out to figure all those body morphs out !!

ming, go back to the DAZ Store. The Michael 2.0 page has an anatomy chart popup, which should help.

I got him, he's fantastic! next on my list, ghost of macbeth's orc!!

Woohoooo, what a lovely purchase right before Christmas :) And sithgoblin, the ghost's orc is so worth every cent :) I just can't wait for some spare time for Michael 2 and Orc renders LOL

I noticed that the morphs list has "pbm morphs" in several places. What does that mean?

Thanks.

Aurelio
AZL Studios

Attached Link: http://www.daz3d.com/pages/faq/answers/michael/making.html

FYI, All; On the DAZ FAQ page is a link to a nice piece on the making of Michael 1 & 2. - Something I think any buyer or prospective buyer would find of interest. - Pics of some of the DAZ personel involved in his creation, too. (see link)

Has anyone gotten the "Legal distribution of add-ons for Michael 2.0" text to pop up? What does it say? When I click it, nothing happens (even though the other pop-ups work for me).

pbm = partial body morphs

The link to the legalese is broken, but I gather the limits are the same as for Victoria 2 (posted on the FAQ page) - No distrib of CR2 (which contains Vic2's morphs), but Face and pose files that contain morph SETTINGS are okay. Heh - heh - heh, I see the Michael 2 page has changed in the last couple of hours; together with the links to PopUps below the description, they've added 2 links, One to Customer Comments, and one to the "Making of" FAQ I refered to above. Nice touches.

A morph dial that begins with pbm- means that you should not use it. These morphs are part of a larger complex. If you use these subunits it will probably break the seams with the groups next door. Almost all of them will have the main dial to use in Body, or the logical group to control it. For example, the knee fix morph will have the control to use in Shin, because the bend channel is there and you can fix the joint while you are setting it. You should also realize that these are ERC morphs (pbm is a type of ERC) and are thus prone to cross-talk. In some cases, V2 and M2 will have cross-talk because they have morphs with the same name. Check Rob Whiz' and Nerd's site for an explanation and a solution. I have an alternate solution explained on my site, but Rob's seems to be the favored one.

Oh, and M2P4 is not Mike2 any more than V2P4 is V2. It is a separate geometry. It is the shape and has the same grouping as the P4 male, so the P4 clothing will conform. The Michael textures will work and the head morphs will work. The change in the grouping makes the body morphs not work. If M2P4 follows the same pattern as V2P4, there will not be very many morphs for the body. If there were, it would also mean morphing the clothing.

Thanks Jaager -- if one shouldn't use it, seems odd that they advertise it in the Morphs list. I'll check those resources out.

You are not understanding - the morphs are set - just not individually. They are slaves. They are set by other morphs. Or, by a master dial in Body. The dials should be hidden, but Poser will not allow ERC dials to be hidden - so pbm- is used instead as a marker. Also, no number show on dials that are set by a master control. Poser knows the values. Poser will add them in if you do a Spawn morph. If you set Muscle1 in Body to 1.0 and then set the pbm-Muscle1 to 1.0, the dial will show 1.0, but the actual value will be 2.0 and a Spawn will use the 2.0 value. You can do what you want, but if you set pbm- dials, the result is likely to be junk.

On both my Michael V2 and the P4 version, the Eyebrows and the Uppereyebrows are linked to the same place on the map, and that's there area of the upper eyebrow area. I'm going to try to re-download incase Netscape messed up the download. But I've never had trouble downloading either through Netscape or Internet Explorer, so I thought I would ask if anyone else is having this problem? Liz Pope Dreamspinner Inc.

I dunno.. I haven't looked at it closely. But that doesn't sound like something that would be messed up by the download. Anz

If the eyebrows are messed up, that's hardly a download problem. If there would've been some error in the download, the whole file would probably be corrupt, making it impossible to extract.

That might be an issue with the suit, not Mike. I don't have the suit so I can't check it out. I've got a relative infestation, too, (in-laws, but I prefer them over my own relatives), so I can't play much this weekend. :-(

#26 the Eyebrows and the Uppereyebrows are linked to the same place on the map =
the M2 upgrade is just the cr2 with the boatload of morphs - the mapping is a geometry bit. Not even in the upgrade.
If you have M2 complete and are not familiar with the Materials =
The texturing of these two involves the same steps as with Vic. This issue may be the most frequent recurring thread here.
Looks like DAZ lifted the Eyebrows map from the head and put it under the UpperB with Mike. But I am confused. The DAZ texture has fur on the main head.
Either both are supposed to be transmapped, Eyebrows should have a background of the skin texture, which it does not on the Hi-res, or I am missing something.

Anyway Liz, what you see is the way Mike has always been. I guess I better starting using Mike - at least now with M2, I can get a figure that does not look like it has overdosed on Dianabol.

#29 Clothing is formed over a particular body shape. If you alter this, the clothing must also be altered (morphs).
Poser 5 may come with tools to automatically do this (collision detection? a JP effect applied a second figure?).
Now, you would either need to:
Morph the clothing
Setup magnets to morph the clothing - which means one tool could adjust multiple clothing items
Purchase the adjustors in a Store (if they exist).

Ok so when does poser 5 Come out?

Well you all can just BITE ME! I just got Mike and assy a few weeks ago and after X-mas shopping I'm FLAT BROKE till next year..... where's those recipts?!? Everything's going back!!!!

Jaager: Thanks for the very clear explanation pf the pbm's. They were a mystery to me. So your saying, they're a sort of internal morph geometry that shouldn't be visible, so leave 'em alone, yes? Odd.

Also, would you be kind enough to provide a link to your site. I'd like to learn a little more about it...

Thanks.

Well, they may be linked to full body morphs, but I change the pbm morphs all the time and don't have a problem. They let me tweak that one body part easily without affecting the rest of the body, isn't that the point? There's a brows in (I think that's what its called...poser ain't open right now!) that puts the upper brow inside his head so you don't have to worry about it. You can finally see the textured brow while posing without those ugly dots floating over his head!

Attached Link: http://www.jaager.com

Here is the deal = In a modeling program - if you morph several groups to get a desired shape, it involves moving the verts at the border of two groups. There are two verts at each position - one for each group. Both of these verts, and the ones running up to them must be moved. This means that the same value for the morph must be used for every group involved. Otherwise the seam can split.

You can set each morph in the group by hand to the same value, or you can do it with a controlling dial. If the dial is in Body, it is called a FBM - on an actual figure group = PBM. The difference is where the control is. Daz has set most of these morphs up as both FBM and PBM.
The dial in Body controls one group morph, which in turn, controls all of the others.

Almost every morph in M2 can be set from Body. This makes it very easy. The face morphs, other singleton morphs, and joint fixes are out in real groups.

If you turn a pbm- dial, you are setting a chain out of sequence. I have seen some really screwed up character cr2 files for V1 - where the FBM Fairy has been set on the groups - chest = 0.5 rCollar 0.2 , abdomen 1.0 etc.
Daz has just tried to help you avoid this sort of error by marking the dials that you should set somewhere else.
The author of the morph is just trying to help you to avoid making a hash of his work.

Poser will try to smooth and error, and sometimes it works. And sometimes, you get a weird angle at a profile or a black streak on a body part, if the facets are twisted. None of this is set in stone, but if you have the skill to stunt with these morphs, you would not need to ask questions about what it all means.

God, I love this stuff...Thanks for the link, Jaager.

OK. I guess I've just never moved them enough to make a difference in the render or something.