Add our own morphs on a character

[Aelin]

I looked a good part of afternoon, and I'm not able to find how add my own elven ears in Poser or Daz Studio. I wish to do more than morphs ++.
I know i can create them in Hexagon, Zbrush, Sculptris... but after that, how integrate them to a character; for example V4?

And I'm not sure. Need I to import the complete character just for ears? Or can I only keep the ears?


I ask here because I know we have more Poser users than Daz users.

It's in view of do more than a personnal usage.

 

[parkdalegardener]

You will only be able to add them as morph targets if they have the same number of vertices in the same winding order as the ears on your character. In your case V4. Otherwise they would be smart props that cover V4's ears. If you went that route I would include a MAT file to remove V4's ears from the final render so that they do not need to be ungodly large to cover those on V4 already. This is for Poser and any older version of Studio. I do not know what DAZ does currently so this info may not apply there.

(edited to add) You can take the V4 mesh directly into your modeling program to make the morphs but you must only include the vertice vector changes in the morph package. Anything else used to be against DAZ copywrite as you could extract V4 from the morph data if the face data is included with the vertice data.

[Aelin]

If I take the mesh, I suppose i can edit the notepad to remove all lines (deltas?channels?) exactly with the code of Daz character, keeping only the new parts.

Otherwise, yes I read here and there we need to keep exactly the same vertices, otherwise the skeleton of character will no more recognize the structure.

In fact, i prefer trying first in pz2, like majority of morphs. I'm afraid a smart prop couldn't follow a face of somebody has Ethnic morphs and decides to use them; because I haven't them.

So if i made something in Hexagon (for example). Once is done, and the code is cleared, I import simply in Poser to save?
The difficulty for me is to understand the steps to "transplant" the new morph on a character.

[parkdalegardener]

Take the V4 head into your modeler making sure to keep the vertex order.

Move the vertices to the shape you want your ears to be.

Save modified head making sure about winding order.

Apply new head as morph target to V4. Save in Pose Library to make pz2.

Strip geometry from pz2 and point it to the original V4 OBJ instead of your head.

Pz2 should load your morph moving vertices only. The V4 geometry will be stripped and your morph safe for use by others.

That is the basic method off the top of my head. Works from P1 to now. Worked in Studio up to 3.something. Don't know if Studio still works the same way so no guarantees for that program.

If you need a utility to strip the geometry look in Rendo's freestuff for GeomStripper. It should be there and should still work on newer operating systems. It is an old utility made for WinXP.

[Aelin]

Ok Pdg, I'll look this tomorrow.
I don't know how it's in DS4, but i work always with DS3, so i can check after if i made correctly.

Unfortunately, at first look, John Hoagland (became John-Katris) have removed the GeomStrip. I'll check other sites tomorrow too, we never know.

Thank you too 3dPoetry! I didn't know the head of V4 could come alone.

[Aelin]

Indeed I could export only the head by Poser; this is a big difference with DS.

Hexagon is very slow because of number of faces. So for today I made a stupid morph on one ear to move ahead and to look if I understand well.
So I load V4, then i do Display => load morph target
Until there, I have just to turn the new "morph" until 1 with the slide.

I save in pz2 (trying only head; then after several trials all v4), but when I open the file, I find nothing in Geometry shape. Only things like

Code: [Select]

targetGeom FHMJohn
{
keys
{
k  0  0
}
}And with a glance, all is in "k 0 0".
I changed the "targetGeom" by the real V4 object, no change.
I tested with a pp2, but Poser saves in place in cr2 with a .pmd.
So I guess I miss something.

*******
EDIT: need I to keep the name of body part? In this case "head".

[Aelin]

  I will try to move by this way in more.
Once I'll have success, I'll put a screen capture of the "horror morph" just for fun.

[Aelin]

The good news is I had an illumination to do a descent duo of ears for future 

The bad news is i have no geometry in cr2 for my "horror" test. I tried to remove unnecessary parts of body of the cr2, but at final i had no change in the crucial place.
I made a pp2, and i have geometry inside, but it was from the "object" made in Hexagon, not V4. I'm completely lost with it.

And GeomStrip thing is no longer available. I come always after the battle

[parkdalegardener]

Look for cr2edit and morph manager at morphography.

[Aelin]

Ah i have cr2editor; i will go immediatly for the other