Let me inject some history into this discussion, as the people who designed the way morphs are loaded on the Genesis figures had already been through all the previous iterations and designed it with the knowledge of what the pros and cons of the earlier systems were.

The "Millennium Woman" and "Millennium Man" (Vicky 1, Mike 1, and their cohorts) were before my time, but my understanding was that they pretty much had no morphs.

V2 and M2 were the same .obj files as their predecessors, but with morphs built into the .cr2 file (Poser-format character or figure).  You couldn't add new morphs -- if you wanted them to have more morphs you needed a new .cr2 file.  So when you loaded the figure, the morphs were loaded too -- not just the name of the morph so you could display the dial, but all the morph data (the delta for every vertex on the figure).

On the 3rd generation figures, they took advantage of a kludge using .pz2 files (Poser-format poses) to inject morphs into a figure.  The .cr2 had to have the morph channels, but the vertex deltas were in separate .pz2 files.  There was typically an inject and remove .pz2 for each morph, plus ones that loaded multiple morphs -- all head, all body, all arm, all leg, etc.  So the .cr2 didn't take as long to load, but you had to inject the morphs you needed.  However, you were still limited to the morph channels in the .cr2 -- there were channels for each of the Daz3D morphs, and some extra channels (I think 30?) for 3rd-party morphs.  So you had an extremely limited number of morph channels you could use, and if a 3rd-party product used community-channel 23, you couldn't combine it with another 3rd-party product that used that particular channel.  The channel to use was hard-coded into the .pz2, so it couldn't just use whatever channel was available.  If you wanted to add a lot of morphs, you again had to make a new .cr2.

(Consider, by the way, that we're talking about a small number of total morphs -- maybe 100-200 Daz3D morph channels plus 30 extra channels -- not the thousands of morphs we're talking about here.)

So for the 4th generation figures, Daz3D developed the "Extensible Parameters" (ExP) system, so that you weren't limited by the morph channels built into the figure.  When there was a new product, it could add as many morphs as it needed, and they weren't sharing 30 pre-existing slots.  However, it had a couple of complications:  When you added a new product you needed to "initialize" Vicky or Mike with the new morph channels.  This set up the channels, so the dials were loaded with the figure, as they do with the Genesis figures.  However, you still needed to use a .pz2 file to inject or remove the morph deltas.  If you made a character and then you bought a new set of morphs, you couldn't easily add the new morphs to the character the way you can with the Genesis system.  If you tried to make V4 load faster by leaving out some of the morph packs, and then you decided you needed them after all, you were out of luck,  You needed to save a .pz2 with the morphs you used, then re-initialize V4 with the extra morphs, then go through the whole process of loading a new V4, injecting the morphs, and then applying the .pz2 you had saved.

To make things easier, Daz3D developed the Powerloader.  When you wanted to load V4, the Powerloader would pop up, and you could select which morph packs or individual morphs you wanted to inject.  You could even tell the Powerloader to do the "initialize" step, with either all the morphs or just the ones you had asked it to load.  This made things a whole lot easier, with much less risk of forgetting to do something.  However, even with the Powerloader, it took a long time for the figure to load.

So Daz3D developed a new system for Genesis, with most of the pros and few of the cons of the previous systems.  Genesis 1 loads much faster than V4, even when you have lots of morphs.  You don't need to initialize the figure every time you add a new morph pack, you can still have an unlimited number of morphs, morph deltas load automatically when you move the dial so you don't have to inject them manually, and the whole process is much faster.

So what's happened since then?  I don't know what Daz3D has been doing behind the scenes to speed up the process, as it's all done automatically, unlike the pre-Genesis days.  As you can see from the history, Daz3D does care about improving the way morphs are handled, and is keenly aware that customers want the process to be easy and fast.  There are a couple of technology changes since then, and I don't know how each one factors into the time required to load the figure:

1) Switch from Triax to Dual-Quaternion weight-mapping

2) Switch from morphs to rigged bones for facial expressions

3) Addition of HD morphs

4) Much larger textures and more complicated materials

Now, I have no idea what Daz3D is working on to speed up the loading process, but based on history they probably are.

Thank you, @Fixmypcmike

I found that having characters converted from previous generations GREATLY slowed down my loading of G8. 

Yeah, this is when I started seeing the giant slowdowns...when the RSSY converters came out for G3 to G8. I also have XTransfer but I had issues with it so it's been uninstalled. I honestly would ditch the G3 to G8 converter entirely, but I have a few "main" characters that have been converted and I don't want to lose them...and their emoting with G8 is *so* much better so staying with G3 just wasn't an option. There's no way I can reproduce them with just dial-spinning G8 as the 3rd party morph packs I used to create them are different. 

I'm not blaming the converters...I just think it's the nature of the beast. 

...somebody wither here or on DA asked me if I had a full morph of one of my characters. So this is how it's done.  Will have to play with it a little later.

Okay so I just got this product and it seems to convert from the neck down fairly well. But the face seems to remain the default Genesis 8. It seems to not transfer the G3 face shape at all. I've mainly tried with the scene converter but also tried once with the regular converter and every time, it just transferred the shape of the body but not the face. Is this normal? Does it have something to do with HD morphs being inaccessible or something?

No, it should just work.  If you search for the head morph, is it there and just not turned on?  If you go to the morphs directory, (data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/VENDOR under the FIRST directory for Daz Studio Formats specified in the Content Directory Manager), is there a FHM morph there?  What does the log say during conversion?

 

Well I eventually came to the conclusion that the morphs installed through DAZ Connect didn't work with this product, but the rest did. I uninstalled them all and reinstalled them all through the DAZ Install Manager, and then the character converter successfully converted the characters. And this isn't the first product I've had go from not working to working just because of DAZ Connect. At this point, I'm just going to pretend DAZ Connect doesn't exist.

Weird, I followed the coding conventions so it would work properly with Daz Connect.  However, I do not Daz Connect so it is not the most tested code 

You should be able to set up a morph control slider that will dial in all the morphs you've added. Try this tutorial: http://www.digi-dotz.com/index.php/tutorials/daz-studio-tutorials/193-create-single-dial-morph-control-in-daz-studio-4-9

Unfortunately the Morph Expansion & Horn Pack was retired.

Sure. The basic way is to export your morph as an Object file (.obj) - be sure to give it the name that you want to use for your slider.  Then, load a new, unmorphed copy of the base figure, open Morph Loader Pro and specify the .obj file you saved as the source, and it will then create a morph slider for your morph. You can then adjust the parameters for the slider (colour, min/max, icon are the basics). Now simply save your new slider as Support - Morph Asset. It will now load, along with all the others that you have for the figure whenever a copy of that figure is loaded. This will only save the morph - no textures, hair, etc.

Let me inject some history into this discussion, as the people who designed the way morphs are loaded on the Genesis figures had already been through all the previous iterations and designed it with the knowledge of what the pros and cons of the earlier systems were.

The "Millennium Woman" and "Millennium Man" (Vicky 1, Mike 1, and their cohorts) were before my time, but my understanding was that they pretty much had no morphs.

V2 and M2 were the same .obj files as their predecessors, but with morphs built into the .cr2 file (Poser-format character or figure).  You couldn't add new morphs -- if you wanted them to have more morphs you needed a new .cr2 file.  So when you loaded the figure, the morphs were loaded too -- not just the name of the morph so you could display the dial, but all the morph data (the delta for every vertex on the figure).

On the 3rd generation figures, they took advantage of a kludge using .pz2 files (Poser-format poses) to inject morphs into a figure.  The .cr2 had to have the morph channels, but the vertex deltas were in separate .pz2 files.  There was typically an inject and remove .pz2 for each morph, plus ones that loaded multiple morphs -- all head, all body, all arm, all leg, etc.  So the .cr2 didn't take as long to load, but you had to inject the morphs you needed.  However, you were still limited to the morph channels in the .cr2 -- there were channels for each of the Daz3D morphs, and some extra channels (I think 30?) for 3rd-party morphs.  So you had an extremely limited number of morph channels you could use, and if a 3rd-party product used community-channel 23, you couldn't combine it with another 3rd-party product that used that particular channel.  The channel to use was hard-coded into the .pz2, so it couldn't just use whatever channel was available.  If you wanted to add a lot of morphs, you again had to make a new .cr2.

(Consider, by the way, that we're talking about a small number of total morphs -- maybe 100-200 Daz3D morph channels plus 30 extra channels -- not the thousands of morphs we're talking about here.)

So for the 4th generation figures, Daz3D developed the "Extensible Parameters" (ExP) system, so that you weren't limited by the morph channels built into the figure.  When there was a new product, it could add as many morphs as it needed, and they weren't sharing 30 pre-existing slots.  However, it had a couple of complications:  When you added a new product you needed to "initialize" Vicky or Mike with the new morph channels.  This set up the channels, so the dials were loaded with the figure, as they do with the Genesis figures.  However, you still needed to use a .pz2 file to inject or remove the morph deltas.  If you made a character and then you bought a new set of morphs, you couldn't easily add the new morphs to the character the way you can with the Genesis system.  If you tried to make V4 load faster by leaving out some of the morph packs, and then you decided you needed them after all, you were out of luck,  You needed to save a .pz2 with the morphs you used, then re-initialize V4 with the extra morphs, then go through the whole process of loading a new V4, injecting the morphs, and then applying the .pz2 you had saved.

To make things easier, Daz3D developed the Powerloader.  When you wanted to load V4, the Powerloader would pop up, and you could select which morph packs or individual morphs you wanted to inject.  You could even tell the Powerloader to do the "initialize" step, with either all the morphs or just the ones you had asked it to load.  This made things a whole lot easier, with much less risk of forgetting to do something.  However, even with the Powerloader, it took a long time for the figure to load.

So Daz3D developed a new system for Genesis, with most of the pros and few of the cons of the previous systems.  Genesis 1 loads much faster than V4, even when you have lots of morphs.  You don't need to initialize the figure every time you add a new morph pack, you can still have an unlimited number of morphs, morph deltas load automatically when you move the dial so you don't have to inject them manually, and the whole process is much faster.

So what's happened since then?  I don't know what Daz3D has been doing behind the scenes to speed up the process, as it's all done automatically, unlike the pre-Genesis days.  As you can see from the history, Daz3D does care about improving the way morphs are handled, and is keenly aware that customers want the process to be easy and fast.  There are a couple of technology changes since then, and I don't know how each one factors into the time required to load the figure:

1) Switch from Triax to Dual-Quaternion weight-mapping

2) Switch from morphs to rigged bones for facial expressions

3) Addition of HD morphs

4) Much larger textures and more complicated materials

Now, I have no idea what Daz3D is working on to speed up the loading process, but based on history they probably are.

Not a huge fan of the character, but the outfits are great and it's nice to see they took a break from the high-heels for one bundle.

I wish all* footwear with high heels came with a flats morph, but whaddaya? High heels are great when you're only going for sexy but I just can't buy them for action themes, at all.

It seems like a hard problem to solve: the authors aren't financially motivated to make them, so what's the next artist going to do? Offer morphs for every pair of high-heeled boots for $0.25 apiece? Make a ton of freebies?

* not literally "all," I mean normal real-world stuff doesn't need it, but, you know what I mean - fantasy and action-movie type stuff.

There are a few free 3D sculpting programs. Morphing the high heels into flatter heels might be an option. Doing simple morphs can be a lot of fun too. :)

*Edit - I just had an idea that actually kind of worked! I used Mesh Grabber to grab the base of the heel and just dragged it up and into the sole of the shoe:

It's not perfect but it works in a pinch. :) Mesh Grabber is kind of amazing!

 

ROFL! Make sure it's consensual first. :P

I love that graphic, too cute!

Okay so I just got this product and it seems to convert from the neck down fairly well. But the face seems to remain the default Genesis 8. It seems to not transfer the G3 face shape at all. I've mainly tried with the scene converter but also tried once with the regular converter and every time, it just transferred the shape of the body but not the face. Is this normal? Does it have something to do with HD morphs being inaccessible or something?

No, it should just work.  If you search for the head morph, is it there and just not turned on?  If you go to the morphs directory, (data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/VENDOR under the FIRST directory for Daz Studio Formats specified in the Content Directory Manager), is there a FHM morph there?  What does the log say during conversion?

 

Well I eventually came to the conclusion that the morphs installed through DAZ Connect didn't work with this product, but the rest did. I uninstalled them all and reinstalled them all through the DAZ Install Manager, and then the character converter successfully converted the characters. And this isn't the first product I've had go from not working to working just because of DAZ Connect. At this point, I'm just going to pretend DAZ Connect doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, I have found that the morphs in question are being loaded from files I located manually, meaning they did not use DAZ install files.  This in turn means I have to find them and delete them manually.  Which folder would they be in, because it isn't simply about going into the people folder and deleting every instance of genesis 8?  I'm thinking somewhere in the data or runtime directory in My Daz 3d Library Directory, please correct me if I'm wrong. 

You can use the File List for "SC Lucy for Teen Josie 8" as a reference to find the figure's morph in the data folder. If you don't mind losing the character to fix your base G8F's corruption, you'll want to delete the data folder for the character:

• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Body.dhdm
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Body.dsf
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Body.png
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Head.dhdm
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Head.dsf
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy for Teen Josie/SC Lucy Head.png
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy/SC Lucy Lash.dsf
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy/SC Lucy.dsf
• /data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs/second circle/SC Lucy/SC Lucy.png

Or you could edit the .dsf file following TheKD's advice and:

You can go into the offending morph inside the data file, using a text editor(i use notepad++ but I think any will do), scroll down, look for any "value" : 1  lines, change that to 0. Everytime I had to fix it, I have found the offending "value" : 1 always under the channel section, so it has never been a long scroll lol. After you change the to 0, save the file and it should load without the morph dialed in. I find the tex editor method a lot easier than the do it inside DS method personally.

If the morph file opened in text file is straight up jibberish, it means it's compressed. Inside DS go to window  > panes > batch convert, then choose the file you want to edit and apply.

I'm trying to put a G2F figure into a Victoria 4 T-pose.  The shapes match after applying the hidden clone morph, but the pose doesn't.

I did notice if I turned on the Joint Editor, the skeleton bones don't move when I slide on the hidden morph.  This might cause some misalignment when posing the morphed shape.  Oh well, nevermind then.

In the old days, way back at generation 3 - M3 and V3,  you had to option to only load the morphs you wanted or need to the base, and you could apply or remove said morph at any time. Thems were the days.  

Update... Should have done it sooner, but just looked at the Product pages to see the file locations...

I understand a little more now where all of the file locations are, though they do all seem to reside in My Daz 3D Library, so still not sure why these Morph packs would react differently than all other Package types as far as DIM is concerned...

But I'm guessing it's ok to find all of the file locations for each Morph Package and delete them manually in Windows Explorer to see if I can get back to a state where DS and DIM agree with each other about whether they're installed or not?

In the old days, way back at generation 3 - M3 and V3,  you had to option to only load the morphs you wanted or need to the base, and you could apply or remove said morph at any time. Thems were the days.  

Yes, those are greyed out indicating that they are not instaleld according to the database. However, they are also tagged as user categories so it's quite possible that something odd is going on. Is this the system your content was installed on, or have you transferred from another machine? Have you changed the content directories used? A couple of ways this could happen with DIM - another copy of the files in a different content location, or the location of the files chnaged since DIM installed them - either way it wouldn't know to delete the duplicate/moved files and they would still be there.

Thanks for the detailed response! Yes, this is the only machine I've used DS on, and also yes I manually changed the location of My DAZ 3D Library and My Library to a dedicated SSD separate from the SSD where Windows and DS are (and Content had been originally installed to).

I've never needing to look further into Morphs beyond finding their Sliders and using them, so it seems difficult from what I've looked at to grasp the underlying Files, Locations and Organization within the packages...

They all seem to reside physically at:

...\My DAZ 3D Library\People\Genesis 8 Female\Shapes
That original physical location on my C: Drive where they would have originally been installed definitely doesn't exist any more. Though for instance the Natural Breast Morph folder only has an "Info.duf" and "Zero.duf", not any of the individual Morphs... Are those somewhere else outside of either My DAZ 3D Library or My Library? Even if so, it's odd that the "Body Diversity" folder there does have all the individual Morph .duf's and it's reacting exactly the same way (meaning if ...\My DAZ 3D Library\...\Shapes was where all of it's files really resided, then that set definitely shouldn't have an original copy of the files sitting somewhere to create the issue like the NBM package...)...

I'm guessing there's more to know about what files are put where for Morphs specifically? Everything else seems to uninstall fine via DIM, even in whatever state I'm in as far as having moved my Content, etc....

I had load times of > 10 minutes. I'm back to 1-2 minutes. Some things to consider:

- Number of runtimes. I used to have 2-3 with data folders and morphs spread all over the place. Does not speed up things so I reduced to one.
- Location of runtime. I used to have an external drive for my runtime. I switched to an external SSD. Had to deal with the reduced amount of space but the SSD made things noticeable faster.
- Products causing longer load times. Not sure so I don't want to blame anyone. But I think removing the Auto Shape Enhancer / Auto Face Enhancer products made loading G8F faster.
- Remove unnecessary products, at least temporarily. You don't even have to uninstall via DIM. Just check your data folder data/DAZ 3D/Genesis 8/Female/Morphs and .../Projection Morphs. Move some unused figure/morph folders to another location. You can always move them back if you need a particular figure or morph.

Do the product icons (the icon for the whole product, in the Products tab of Smart Content) have a triangle in a circle icon at top-right? If not they have been installed through Connect (within Daz Studio) and you need to right-click and select Uninstall.

Huh, I never look at the Products Tab so this was a new view to me, but Attached are images of what the 3 Sets I Uninstalled via DIM (which is the only way I've ever Installed/Un-installed Daz Store Products) look like there. 

To right click on them, "Uninstall" isn't an option, and in the Info Pane that pops up when I hover the mouse over any of the three, it says "Double Click to Install"...

After having this problem, I went and also Un-installed a few Characters via DIM and they were un-installed succesfully, no problem. Not sure what's up with the Morph Packs.

Also, Mr. Haseltine, would you agree that the most likely cause of the issue from my original post and the (Not Responding) is due to the amount of at least Morphs I have installed? If so is there anything else along those lines that can bog down the loading of Assets, more specifically (seemingly) G8 Figures? BTW, Environments of any size and Pops don't create this problem at all when I load them.

Always very interested in your opinion!

Thanks!

It is for sure that a morph dial doesn't work if you remove the attached file from the morph folder before the first time you use it, so that would mean the morph hasn't actually been loaded yet. However, that doesn't get around that fact that the more characters you have installed the longer it takes to load the figure, save the character preset, or any other load/save function the involves the character. Also, it's very time consuming when you are looking for a particular morph, don't remember its exact name, and have hundreds if not thousands of morph dials to go through.

I would think it would be a much better idea to have only a certain number of base morph dials that load with the figure and all the rest only load with specific "morph injection" files that come with each character or package. 

Not a huge fan of the character, but the outfits are great and it's nice to see they took a break from the high-heels for one bundle.

I wish all* footwear with high heels came with a flats morph, but whaddaya? High heels are great when you're only going for sexy but I just can't buy them for action themes, at all.

It seems like a hard problem to solve: the authors aren't financially motivated to make them, so what's the next artist going to do? Offer morphs for every pair of high-heeled boots for $0.25 apiece? Make a ton of freebies?

* not literally "all," I mean normal real-world stuff doesn't need it, but, you know what I mean - fantasy and action-movie type stuff.

There are a few free 3D sculpting programs. Morphing the high heels into flatter heels might be an option. Doing simple morphs can be a lot of fun too. :)

*Edit - I just had an idea that actually kind of worked! I used Mesh Grabber to grab the base of the heel and just dragged it up and into the sole of the shoe:

It's not perfect but it works in a pinch. :) Mesh Grabber is kind of amazing!