Digital Art Zone

Hi

I’m trying to load a PZ2 file that loads a PMD file and creates a control slider for the morph. But DAZ Studio doesn’t seem to do anything after loading the PZ2 file.

I found a couple of older threads on DeltaX’s InjectPMD but I didn’t understand half of all the techno jargon they were discussing. I believe the plugin hasn’t been updated for DS4 yet?

I’m a simple man - all I want to do is load the dang file. Is there any way to do that in DS4.5?

Thanks

I thought that DS4 on, had the ability to read the PMD file without a plugin?  I am sure Richard will know.  When saving from Poser, users were advised to not use External Binary Morph targets, and then this did not arise.

DS, since version ... 3. IIRC - will load pmd files called by cr2 figure files, and sometimes loads pmd files called by pp2 prop files (depending on the format of the pmd call in the pp2), but has never supported loading pmd files called by pz2 poses.

Inject pmd is a plugin that allows loading pmds from pz2s, but has not been updated for DS 4.5.

There are a few ways round the problem. If you have Poser, you cna load the figure, apply the pz2, save out the figure with ‘use external morphs’ turned off, and you then have a figure with the morph in that you can load into DS, and/or use assorted scripts/utilities to turn into a regular injection morph or an ExP morph.

There is also at least one free utility and one paid for utility that will take a pmd file and put it into a figure file or regular injection pose file that will then work in DS without actually using Poser at all.

Thanks David for the explanation, my memory is a bit hazy at times

Thanks both for the feedback.

I have now spent 4 days on this problem. I’ve downloaded and tried the free tools I could find (very few unfortunately) and couldn’t find any paid for programs (other than Poser itself). I’ve read loads and loads of documentation (even the unofficial CR2 spec) and I officially need help.

I purchased GND4 and her morph works on V4, but I can’t get any bl00ming clothes to fit. Alizea3D has provided a number of GND clothing fits but they’re all in PMD files. The problem seems to be DS4 cannot read external binary morphs (PMD) referenced in a pose file (PZ2). One of the free tools for extracting PMD’s cannot use the newer format and I even tried to manually hack the CR2.

So then I got to thinking. If I have the base V4 figure and the morphed V4 figure, surely I can calculate the delta on the two meshes (using the OBJ files or something) and save that as a generic V4-to-GND4 adjustment for hair and clothing etc?

Is this possible and what tools would you use to do something like this?

Thanks

cridgit - 21 September 2012 08:27 AM

Is this possible and what tools would you use to do something like this?

Thanks

No, that’s not possible. The clothes will have completely different meshes to V4,so you can’t apply the morph deltas from the V4 vertices to the clothing’s vertices as the vertices don’t correspond.

I’m presuming yuou tried the Morph Exchange utility from kuroyumes-developmentzone, as you mentioned reading the cr2 spec at that site.

Dimension3D has a pmd binary moph tool in a pack of tools, and his Poser Editor also contains a function to extract pmd morphs and embed them as regular morphs in the cr2 of figures they apply to. He sells these products at Renderosity and Content Paradise, and you can read descriptions and the manuals at his own site http://d3d.sesseler.de/

However, there are also utilities for creating morphs in clothes to match the morpsh in the figure wearing them. The utilities use a brute force mathematical method of aomething like what you described - for the vertices of the clothing, checking the morph deltas of the nearest vertices of the wearing figure, averaging them and then morphing the clothing vertices by that amount.

Now ...

First, understand that all of the automatic clothing morph products never produce morphs as good as a carefully hand made one by the creator. Depending on the particular morph, the base figure and the clothing mesh the results can be really very good, OK only for a background figure, or terrible. Some of the methods allow features like defining some parts (like zips, buttons etc) not to be distorted, some don’t, and some put in extra adjsutment morphs.

Main products would be:

Morphing Clothes by Dimensions3D

Also a subsidiary function within Wardrobe Wizzard that comes with Poser. Older version from PhilC also works as a standalone program of use to DS-only users.

(By ‘Subsidiary function’ I mean this program’s primary purpose is to convert clothing from one figure to another, but it will also create and add morphs to the clothing from morphs in the figure.)

However, for adding morphs to clothes for V4, personally I found I generally got the best results using magent sets for those morphs, wherein you apply the magnet set for the morph to the clothing, but can then adjust the magnets a bit to get the best fit and then spawn the morph in the clothing. I’m pretty sure there’s at least one if not two sets of magnets for putting GND4 morph into V4 clothes. the usual suspects for that are Lyrra and Netherworks. I’ll see if I can find links, but may be awhile ... got to take a pain break.

Lyrra.

http://www.cyclopsstudio.net/gnd4magnets.htm

Her magnet sets work fine in DS as well as Poser. In fact using this kind of morph magnet set is easier in DS as DS includes various related functions that Poser doesn’t, so in Poser you have to do things the hard way, or get assoretd add-on scripts.

These will be for the original GND4. I gather there’s been a recent update. Don’t know how much the body shape has changed, but I wouldn’t imagine it would need much tweaking of the magnets.

Oh - ,missed out one obvious option.

DS has a built in function to try to create matching morphs in clothes from the figuire wearing the clothes. In DS4.5 it is called ‘transfer active morphs’ in the menus. Just load V4, dial up GND4, then load clothes, conform, then use ‘tramsfer active morphs’.

It is a brute force and ignorance mathematical mehtod like I decribed earlier, though, and e.g. doesn’t know it’s supposed to keep a button round, a zip the same width all the way along etc. (There is a function to handle that by defining rigidity groups for Genesis clothes, but I don’t thinl that applies to V4, non-triax clothing.) Try it first, but if you don’t like the output, maybe get and have a go with the GND4 magnet set.

I really shouldn’t try to post advice when I’m so muzzy, and am only remembering and writing things in a random order. The stuff in my posts above is correct, but jumbled instead of ordered to address your situation. Without repeating the detail -

If you have a general need to be able to get morphs out of pmd files and into regular Poser format files, then consider the Dimension3D utilities for that.

If, however, your principal concern is fitting clothes to a GND4-morphed V4, including clothes for which there are no pmd morphs available, then I’d leave aside the whole pmd business if I were you and just concentrate on the methods of making clothes fit yourself as follows:

If you are only concerned with GND4 fits for V4 clothes on V4, then if I were you I’d try the transfer active morph function in DS - costs nothing extra. If the results are good enough for you, then fine. If not, then I’d go for Lyrra’s GND4 morph fit magnets as linked above.

If, however, you have a general need to add morphs, not just GND4 morphs, to V4 clothing then I’d consider either (a) the Lyrra GND4 morph pack plus some fo the other V4 morph fit packs from either Lyrra or Netherworks, Or (b) Dimesion3D’s morphing clothes.

If, last of all, you actually want to use Genesis, e.g. with the V4 morph shape and the GND4 morph transferred by GenX, then scrub all the above, let the autofit handle it, and if that’s not good enough results, maybe learn about adding rigidity groups after clicking to convert legacy V4 clothing to Triax before then using the transfer utility to convert to Genesis, so the automatic GND4 morph creation in the now-Genesis clothing keeps pockets, zips, buttons etc how they should be.

Why not load the items in DS3 and use InjectPMD there and then save them?

I have used the DS3 method with Ds4. Can anyone confirm that it works with ds4.5

Hi MJ: thanks for the tip - I’ve tried loading in DS3 but again DS doesn’t load the PMD in the PZ2 file, so I’ll explore the options suggested by David.

David, thank you very very much for your help and for obviously going to a lot of effort. There is a load of useful information in your answer. You are right that I probably want to use Genesis so I’ll look at those other options. I did try the Transfer Active Morphs as you suggested and it almost works, but it deforms the clothing at some places (obviously due to the brute force method you outlined).

I’ve written a special thank you note for you here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/8290/

I take it Alizea3D has changed how the files were made, as I have most of the early GND4 fits and they are PZ2 INJ/REM’s with a python script to create the custom channels. Needless to say they don’t work in DS as it can’t read python, so I got rid of the python script, changed the files extention from PZ2 to CR2 and added a “readscript” line to it that pointed to the outfits own CR2.

What this does is load one CR2 with another one, and while it’s doing that it also adds the new channels for you, which means you now have somewhere to INJ the morphs.

Same thing can be done with Injection PMD’s, add a “readscript” line before the call for the PMD that points to the other CR2, and change the “injectPMDFileMorphs” to “morphBinaryFile” and it should load the outfit with the new morphs.

Thanks for the suggestion, Bejaymac. I followed your instructions and DS loads the CR2 but it neither injects nor applies the morph.

Oh well…

so if I understand this correctly, DS should automatically load pmds for CR2’s and pp2’s that have them.

This is not a behavior I am observing at the moment.

I just loaded a pp2 file (window blinds from PICK), and the morphs do not work at all.  Had to scatch my head and think about that.  Went looking and sure enough there is a pmd file associated.  But the morphs do NOT function in DS 4.5.  Do not know if it is just this particular object, or an overall issue.  Not sure what other items I might have to test with.

I can assure you PMD’s do not work with CR2’s at all as far as my experience is concerned with Daz 4.5

So is it beginning to look like PMD injection is broken, over all in 4.5?