i might not be the most qualified person to answer this, i have not used daz studio for this kind of work for a while, but i am remembering an option in morph loader that was designed for this kind of thing. Believe it is called Reverse Deformations, and is available once you have selected your geo file to import as a morph.

I also think GoZ caters for this....or is GoZ not available in zbrush core?

Thanks, yeah I figured I'd probably have to do the morphing from a zeroed figure. Just wasn't sure if there was any sort of checkbox or option to only consider manipulated polygons or something.

Fred: I just want to know what my options are when using Zbrush to morph and the workflow that's required. It's not so much about solving the problem as it is figuring out the various ways I can do it and which is easiest or superior.

Bejaymac said:

Probably going to get cursed by some for this post, but what the hell, I have a thick skin 

The two attached images were taken within seconds of each other, in the first you will notice I have the figure on the right selected, that's G8F, loaded using her DUF file. Notice the Shaping tab on the left doesn't show my user name anywhere, and the first morph is "Monique 8 Body".
Now look at the second image, in it I have the second figure selected, this is also G8F also loaded from her DUF file a few seconds after the first. With this one I added one of my character presets to it, now check the Shaping tab, suddenly my user name is there, and the first morph is now my character Samay.

That morph DSF file isn't in the Morphs folder, as a result G8F has no idea it's there and never loads it when she's loading, the only way to get my character to load, is with a preset that knows where to find the DSF file.

IMHO this is how we should have been dealing with morphs since DS4.0, only the assets from the starter essentials and the head/body/expression morph packs should be loaded as a Genesis series figure is loaded, everything else should only be loaded using presets.

That last part will cause some of the cursing I mentioned, however the next part is probably going to cause even more 

The problem with what I've done here is that you can't do this directly inside DS, it will always save the morph asset inside the figures Morphs folder. So you have to manually move files and do a spot of very minor editing of said files, in this case two pathways in the DSF file and one pathway in the DUF file.

VERY INTERESTING

I have a reasonable PC but I am struggling with load times, pose resets etc.  Simulations are an issue . . . . .particularly if they use a timeline . . .

I could be mixing a bunch of unrelated bits here.  Not that much earlier in this thread there was a side bar about ERC creating load.  I have recently completed an exercise of removing a bunch of content from my normal runtime as a way to try to improve load times etc: removed a number of characters, removed a number of expression sets that had custom morphs, removed some similar products that were close to duplicates (expression and morph sets), removed some products (like AFE and Kitten) that contained lots of morphs, removed a lot of expressions that came as part of pose sets. . . .   It helped - not nearly as much as I might have hoped given the effort. . . . 

As someone who started with Poser a long time ago, I have been intrigued over the years when folks have commented on the loading time and the fact that 'all these morphs needed to be loaded up.'  The idea of 'injects' would quickly surface in my mind or the discussion and would just as quickly be discounted or ignored.  (I could never quite understand how clothes could load with their specific morphs (and tools could add others if desired) while characters needed to load with every morph known to mankind.  Anyways. . . .)

This 'preset' idea you have implemented sounds like an 'inject.'   Maybe?  But it would only be worth the effort (for me) if it helped with the 'character induced overhead.'  If it was to turn out the load time issue is really ERC, then it might be another windmill. . .    

I would be interested in more details regarding your last paragraph; and, given this discussion's proximity to the scene saving discussion and expressions being lost, what impact your idea would have on characters loaded in this way when saved to a scene when it is reloaded.  Thanks.

Bejaymac said:

Probably going to get cursed by some for this post, but what the hell, I have a thick skin 

The two attached images were taken within seconds of each other, in the first you will notice I have the figure on the right selected, that's G8F, loaded using her DUF file. Notice the Shaping tab on the left doesn't show my user name anywhere, and the first morph is "Monique 8 Body".
Now look at the second image, in it I have the second figure selected, this is also G8F also loaded from her DUF file a few seconds after the first. With this one I added one of my character presets to it, now check the Shaping tab, suddenly my user name is there, and the first morph is now my character Samay.

That morph DSF file isn't in the Morphs folder, as a result G8F has no idea it's there and never loads it when she's loading, the only way to get my character to load, is with a preset that knows where to find the DSF file.

IMHO this is how we should have been dealing with morphs since DS4.0, only the assets from the starter essentials and the head/body/expression morph packs should be loaded as a Genesis series figure is loaded, everything else should only be loaded using presets.

That last part will cause some of the cursing I mentioned, however the next part is probably going to cause even more 

The problem with what I've done here is that you can't do this directly inside DS, it will always save the morph asset inside the figures Morphs folder. So you have to manually move files and do a spot of very minor editing of said files, in this case two pathways in the DSF file and one pathway in the DUF file.

Where are you keeping your custom morphs? How do you edit the files? I don't have a problem loading G8 yet but it's an interesting idea! A step-by-step guide would be appreciated, in case I ever want to do this. Please assume I know nothing about editing Daz files manually because that is the case! 

Probably going to get cursed by some for this post, but what the hell, I have a thick skin 

The two attached images were taken within seconds of each other, in the first you will notice I have the figure on the right selected, that's G8F, loaded using her DUF file. Notice the Shaping tab on the left doesn't show my user name anywhere, and the first morph is "Monique 8 Body".
Now look at the second image, in it I have the second figure selected, this is also G8F also loaded from her DUF file a few seconds after the first. With this one I added one of my character presets to it, now check the Shaping tab, suddenly my user name is there, and the first morph is now my character Samay.

That morph DSF file isn't in the Morphs folder, as a result G8F has no idea it's there and never loads it when she's loading, the only way to get my character to load, is with a preset that knows where to find the DSF file.

IMHO this is how we should have been dealing with morphs since DS4.0, only the assets from the starter essentials and the head/body/expression morph packs should be loaded as a Genesis series figure is loaded, everything else should only be loaded using presets.

That last part will cause some of the cursing I mentioned, however the next part is probably going to cause even more 

The problem with what I've done here is that you can't do this directly inside DS, it will always save the morph asset inside the figures Morphs folder. So you have to manually move files and do a spot of very minor editing of said files, in this case two pathways in the DSF file and one pathway in the DUF file.

Misumu said:

 

 Thanks, I was a fraid that if I created a face, a texture would just erase it.

HeadShop 13 - DAZ Studio plugin - YouTube

I watched that.  It was what raised the question in the first place. Headshop's textures in the video looked like they would clash with any scene the figure was in (especially the hair).

Texture and morph are applied to "head" not hair. So, no clash.

Well I'm not an expert and could be wrong about this.  You know the morph you want to add to the sleeve and the pose of the model using the morph. With this in your mind, do zero pose and while working on the morph, extend it past what you intended, so when it comes back, you have some room to work with to get what you want.

I hope that made sense...lol

inquire said:

Well, if you really want to use G 8 expressions with G 8.1, what if you just hide the two folders with the dummy files, temporarily. Then, you should have all expressions. Let's say you want to continue working with the file for several days. (That's what happened to me.) Put the folders with the dummy files back (or unhide them). When you start up DS and reopen your saved scene, won't you still have access to those G 8 expressions? That's what happened to me.

It does not work reliably.  I had only tested with "Afraid HD" and that is an expression which is itself dummied out.  The behavior I saw with "Afraid HD" did not occur when I used "A Lady - Angry 01 Alexander 8".  I assume this is because the scene file stores a setting for that specific morph and only that morph; if the morphs it uses disappear then the expression stops working.

The behavior with the work-round is at best confusing and unreliable.  I'm not going to use it - I have restored the folders containing the dummies.  I know if I use it I will end up with scenes that suddenly change because I used a dummied out expression on a G8.1 character.

I can completely explain the behavior I see, but the "Base Pose Head" morphs are so fundamental to so many of the G8 PA products that I don't want to use those expression/head poses on 8.1 even though I know how to do it.  It is just too error prone.

I thought that there were PA products out there that could flatten a scene or node to remove the pose morphs, but the one I tried (part of the otherwise good "Pose Architect for Genesis 8 Female(s)") consistently fails with this error:

Since the bones are the same removing the pose adjustments to the bones in this way would at least isolate the scene from indirect changes in the things the PA morphs use.

SnowSultan said:

I tried to make a very minor adjustment to the sleeve of a character's outfit in Zbrush Core using the usual morph transfer method (export as OBJ, make adjustments, send back through Morph Loader Pro), but because the character was posed and the clothing was conforming, all of that data was also included in the resulting morph and the clothing bulged out like a puffy coat. I know I could export the clothing in a zero pose and it would work as expected, but then I wouldn't really be able to adjust the sleeve based on the character's pose. Does anyone know if there's a way to get around this problem? Thanks in advance.

I had the same experience with Blender - never did figure out how to do it so reverted to exporting only zero-posed figures. 

Well, if you really want to use G 8 expressions with G 8.1, what if you just hide the two folders with the dummy files, temporarily. Then, you should have all expressions. Let's say you want to continue working with the file for several days. (That's what happened to me.) Put the folders with the dummy files back (or unhide them). When you start up DS and reopen your saved scene, won't you still have access to those G 8 expressions? That's what happened to me.

As jbowler wrote above: 

Yes.  The dummy files are hiding the UI.  Once you have used the UI and saved a scene file the file knows where the actual morph is apparently because the ID in the dummy files is actually the ID of the original G8 expression.  E.g. the Afraid HD dummy contains this ID:

/data/DAZ%203D/Genesis%208/Female/Morphs/DAZ%203D/Expressions/eCTRLAfraid_HD.dsf

So that is "Genesis 8", not "Genesis 8_1" despite the fact that the dummy is actually located here:

...\data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions

And that ID is identical to the one in the original eCTRLAfrid_HD.dsf.  When the scene file is saved I believe it saves the ID, not the path to the morph, so it goes looking for the real expression eCTRL file.

I tried to make a very minor adjustment to the sleeve of a character's outfit in Zbrush Core using the usual morph transfer method (export as OBJ, make adjustments, send back through Morph Loader Pro), but because the character was posed and the clothing was conforming, all of that data was also included in the resulting morph and the clothing bulged out like a puffy coat. I know I could export the clothing in a zero pose and it would work as expected, but then I wouldn't really be able to adjust the sleeve based on the character's pose. Does anyone know if there's a way to get around this problem? Thanks in advance.

skboa said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

skboa said:

There's definitely something weird going on with this beta, some of my characters look slightly different. At first I thought it's a bad morph, but I didn't install anything in a while and when I load the same character in the non-beta it looks normal.

This might be related to Wendy's problem as well.

I sort of fixed mine by uninstalling, reinstalling and letting it add new libraries it detected which were duplicates of my existing ones.

so now my content tab has them all repeated but it works.

Glad it worked for you, do you use the standard libraries? I have them in a non standard path on two different discs. Space is sparse^^

me too but fortunately now my i drive only appears once upon reopening but I have some temporary libraries I didn't really want added 

WendyLuvsCatz said:

skboa said:

There's definitely something weird going on with this beta, some of my characters look slightly different. At first I thought it's a bad morph, but I didn't install anything in a while and when I load the same character in the non-beta it looks normal.

This might be related to Wendy's problem as well.

I sort of fixed mine by uninstalling, reinstalling and letting it add new libraries it detected which were duplicates of my existing ones.

so now my content tab has them all repeated but it works.

Glad it worked for you, do you use the standard libraries? I have them in a non standard path on two different discs. Space is sparse^^

Richard Haseltine said:

Yes, once it's turned into a figure by any method (converting a prop, Figure Setup pane, Transfer Utllity) it is just a figure, of whatever type (parametric/legacy/Poser or weight-mapped) and editing it is the same regardless of its origin (though of course the origin will affect the number of bones you have to start with).

Thank you very much for the answer! : )
I have one more question.
Can I use symmetry when adding and positioning bones?
When doing weight mapping, there is 'Symmetry' option in Tool Settings, but I don't know how to create and control bones symmetrically.
Do I have to 'mirror' like in this video after making one side?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMhSNVkf1UM&ab_channel=TravisDavids

skboa said:

There's definitely something weird going on with this beta, some of my characters look slightly different. At first I thought it's a bad morph, but I didn't install anything in a while and when I load the same character in the non-beta it looks normal.

This might be related to Wendy's problem as well.

I sort of fixed mine by uninstalling, reinstalling and letting it add new libraries it detected which were duplicates of my existing ones.

so now my content tab has them all repeated but it works.

There's definitely something weird going on with this beta, some of my characters look slightly different. At first I thought it's a bad morph, but I didn't install anything in a while and when I load the same character in the non-beta it looks normal.

This might be related to Wendy's problem as well.

PerttiA said:

blaz said:

Damn it, I knew they were older products but I thought they got updated to work with 8.1.

I know about the folder workaround but I was hoping to avoid it since my expression library is not that big.

The textures aren't really a problem since DAZ did a great job. And we have Map Transfer...

 

Thanks for all the answers.

I don't understand why the size of your expression library makes you want to avoid the workaround/fix...

Making the G8 base expressions (and any expressions that are using them) work on G8.1 requires removing dummy/placeholder expressions that are installed to G8.1 morph folders - These dummy/placeholder expression files have no other function than to prevent the base G8 expressions from loading. 

The dummy/placeholder files are located in;

...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Base Pose Head\ (255 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions\ (24 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Base Pose Head\ (255 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions\ (24 files)

Please make sure you are removing the files from G8.1 morph folders and not G8 morph folders.

@PerttiA That's the most concise explanation I've seen yet. I will resist saying something snarky about Daz' failing to provide this information. Now, would you happen to know why Daz might have felt it was useful or necessary to prevent the loading of these files?

@certaintree38 Thanks for your explanation. I waded through several pages of the Victoria 8.1 thread looking for this info.

Gordig said:

Those are definitely Tara's horns, but Tara's horn morphs are available separately from the character (and also for G3, And G3M/G8M). I think it looks a little more like Angharad.

@Gordig I can't be sure about the morph, but that Kayleysss skin is so distinctive that I immediately recognized it and went straight to her Vendor page to look for candidates. I found the horns by accident; so, that's when I thought I had a winner. But Kayleysss also did Freja, who has a squarehead like Angharad.

Unless I have misunderstood the nature of these programs, all they do is make a texture of a face, correct?  They do not actually sculpt the face?  I am asking because  it does not seem particular useful if you want to blend the features of two people via something like the "Lovechild"  but apply a new texture to create a new figure (As in a vastly different skin tone to the originals). I use Daz Studio to create characters for my writing and gaming needs, and the resources available as packaged individuals are ultimately limited compared to how many characters can be in a book. I am a intermediate user of Daz and like to experiment, but do not want to spend long periods of time trying to sculp new figures.  Is there some program that actually can sculpt the underlying features of an image?

inquire said:

Hmmm, interesting. I went back to a file or scene in which two characters were posed while the 

.SAV was in place, allowing me to use the G8 Expressions. Yesterday, I deleted the .SAV on the folders. However, the G8 Expressions continue to be in the Parameters Tab and are, surprisingly (to me), still usable.

Yes.  The dummy files are hiding the UI.  Once you have used the UI and saved a scene file the file knows where the actual morph is apparently because the ID in the dummy files is actually the ID of the original G8 expression.  E.g. the Afraid HD dummy contains this ID:

So that is "Genesis 8", not "Genesis 8_1" despite the fact that the dummy is actually located here:

And that ID is identical to the one in the original eCTRLAfrid_HD.dsf.  When the scene file is saved I believe it saves the ID, not the path to the morph, so it goes looking for the real expression eCTRL file.

What I found, however, was the expression doesn't appear in the "currently used" parameter list of the Head node, presumably because that is just an alias and it doesn't get stored in the scene file.

The main effect of all this is that it effectively prevents PAs from using the old eCTRL files on Genesis 8.1 figures; sure it can be made to work by hiding the dummy files but no one is going to try to sell a product that relies on that...  Maybe that is the intention; change from 8.0 expressions based on the Base Pose Head to expressions based on the equivalent but different FACS morphs avail with 8.1.  Indeed the FACS expressions do use IDs which refer to the new 8_1 directories.  E.g. here is the ID of "Afraid" from the "FACS expressions" directory:

I see the main issue with the work-round as being plain confusion; the work round seems to be safe but potentially very confusing because the Starter packages will certainly be updated.

There is, however, the still unexplain behavior reported earlier of a previously saved scene file changing after updates; i.e. the expression on an 8.1 character changing radically when the scene is reloaded.  I have not been able to reproduce this; I thought I could by undoing the work-round (restoring the directories) but as I said before and above this doesn't mess up previously saved scenes.