What I did:
I exported Collada .dae  with morph targets

Problem:
Morph names are not exported, qhen opened on any other 3D software (Blender, C4D, etc)

What I need:
How can I have the morph name included on .dae export?

Be aware that there is a Timeline bug that causes all of the "O" keyframes to be invisible when you open a saved file. They are still there, but not shown on the timeline. Go down to the keyframe types and toggle "O" off and back on and your "O" type keyframes will reappear on the timeline. I believe this bug is independent of the completely lost keyframes. I think the "A" and "H" have some strange things going on, too.

Aha! It has been pointed out to me that you can right-click in the name/relationships area on the left of the Dopesheet and select Refresh, which redisplays the missing types. The Timeline is not intended to be done yet, so don't despair of these issues being addressed

That's only of comfort to those who have the option of reverting to KeyMate/GraphMate, it seems to me. Fortunately I do so I continue to use them but I was under the impression that the missing morph adjustments are part of the save/reload bug whether or not KeyMate was used.

You need to save the face from the Face Transfer pane to bake those temporary maps first.

I have a laptop and desktop I go back and forth with, and I'd like to use DazStudio on both of them.  The idea I have is to install DazStudio and content to an external hard drive, then simply move that back and forth between my two machines.  I recognize that the drive will need to be the same letter in both situations and I'll have to run the installer on both machines, pointing to the same external drive location.  I want to do this versus just installing twice and carrying project files back and forth because I don't want to install new content twice every time I add a freebie or a purchase.

Is this approach going to work and is there anything in particular I would need to look out for?  If I do work organizing my library and categorizing items, will that transfer over as well?

TIA

@firewarden, thanks!
So here is my test of Dial Control. I loaded G8F, and then played with three morph packages I had bought, then added morphs from characters, put her in hair and clothes, posed, then used skin from Miah and kept it simple. And then loaded Dial Control and not everything can be seen on my snip (too many things selected) but, it gives you an idea of what came into play to create what you see. Interesting, body morphs from charactes first, then the youth morph, clothing support, and then individual head bits. The indvidual morph packages were FSL Everyday People Shapes, SY Unusual Features for Genesis 8 Female, and Oodles of Faces Morphs for Genesis 8 Female(8). 
Where I think this is valuable, is if you want to find what package, there is a little arrow next to the percent, click on that and you will be taken to the actual slider that controls it. Or if someone asks you what a mixture was for a morphed character that you created a year or so ago, load them up, run Dial Control, and it should give you the packages, percentages. Another idea is if you want to take that character and age them up or down, slightly, or otherwise change them, to add a sibling or child to a story, or another relation. 

Depending on how much you morph characters and play around with them, will determine how valuable this tool is for you. I found it extremely easy to understand the use, and operate. 

Mary

Very good info! I majorly morph many of the characters I use, so I think this would be really useful both in current projects and modifying old ones. I've struggled to find ways to leave enough notes so that I can remember everything I did when I come back to a project down the road.

Thank you kindly!

@firewarden, thanks!
So here is my test of Dial Control. I loaded G8F, and then played with three morph packages I had bought, then added morphs from characters, put her in hair and clothes, posed, then used skin from Miah and kept it simple. And then loaded Dial Control and not everything can be seen on my snip (too many things selected) but, it gives you an idea of what came into play to create what you see. Interesting, body morphs from charactes first, then the youth morph, clothing support, and then individual head bits. The indvidual morph packages were FSL Everyday People Shapes, SY Unusual Features for Genesis 8 Female, and Oodles of Faces Morphs for Genesis 8 Female(8). 
Where I think this is valuable, is if you want to find what package, there is a little arrow next to the percent, click on that and you will be taken to the actual slider that controls it. Or if someone asks you what a mixture was for a morphed character that you created a year or so ago, load them up, run Dial Control, and it should give you the packages, percentages. Another idea is if you want to take that character and age them up or down, slightly, or otherwise change them, to add a sibling or child to a story, or another relation. 

Depending on how much you morph characters and play around with them, will determine how valuable this tool is for you. I found it extremely easy to understand the use, and operate. 

Mary

That feature would be the main reason to purchase it for me. Please keep the thread here updated on any extra capabilities you add. Thanks for your quick and honest reply. You always have the best product support!

That is the only reason I would buy this product too - if it told you exactly what product the morph came from.

You can see the path to the morph just by clicking on the cog. If this is the only reason you'd buy this product then it isn't for you. 

I don't seem to be albe to do anything with Daz once it's open, the only useful feature is being able to spilt head and body. That isn't something I would want to do very often, once per figure. The fact that I can't do anything in Daz once it's open is seriously annoying.

The messages point to textures in the temp folder. I never used Face transfer but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a feature to save the temp textures in a definitive location and apply those to your figure, like you can for textures generated by Skin builder.

Gallery link

Title: Ophelia

I'm generally not fond of "Dead Lady Art" but I thought I'd make an exception for this homage to the iconic painting by John Everett Millais.

Rendered in DAZ Studio.
The texture on the lower half of the gown were stretched out, so I re-rendered that part and combined the results in GIMP.

Freebies:

1) Head Morph by Eichhorn Art: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/ea-free-faces-for-genesis-8-amp-3-female-1/81460

2) Head Morph Preset by Alken: https://www.sharecg.com/v/88581/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/Face-for-Genesis-8-Female

3) Skin by Vykthoria: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/vyk-ginger-for-g3f/78259

4) Skin Shader Presets by Twisted Metal: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/twizted-character-creation-kit/81217&ca

5) Pose Converter by MCphylyss: https://www.sharecg.com/v/89846/browse/8/Script/Daz3d-Pose-Converter-Standalone

6) Gown by Ghastly: http://www.sharecg.com/v/66293/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Ghastlys-Slinky-Dress

7) Water Texture by LowlyPoly: https://cubebrush.co/lowlypoly/products/kbmaiq/stylized-water-texture

8) Ground Texture by LowlyPoly: https://cubebrush.co/lowlypoly/products/x22i9g/stylized-terrain-texture

9) HDRI by CGAxis: https://free.cgaxis.com/product/morning-island-hdri/

10) Flower by CGAxis: https://free.cgaxis.com/product/woodland-forget-me-not-3d-model/

11) Flower by dacosta: https://free3d.com/3d-model/plant-04-58791.html

12) Flower by dacosta: https://free3d.com/3d-model/flower-25-99404.html

13) Flower by dacosta: https://free3d.com/3d-model/flower-20-87618.html

14) Flower by printable_models: https://free3d.com/3d-model/anemone-flower-v1--764792.html

15) Reeds by joey-blendernut: https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/plant/grass/rushes

16) Fish by TrekkieGrrrl: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/fish-for-poser/78682

17) Koi by Adam Thwaites: https://www.most-digital-creations.com/koi.htm

18) Dragonfly by Gerald Day: http://fast3d.co.uk/drag/drag.htm

Purchased:
1) Wild Wind Hair

No Count:
- G8F Head Morphs
- G8F Body Morphs
- Monochromatic Shader by Vykthoria (XMas freebie 2018)
- Make Up by Lyoness (XMas freebie 2019)
- Cherry Blossom by sugatak (XMas freebie 2019)

(...)

The only problem is the red nose. I imagine this is because noses in real life have cartiledge and therefore aren't as translucent. We would probably run into this issue with fingers, as well. Any workaround? 

 (...)

 

What about having basic bones, like finger bones, that will give a bone shadow inside the fingers. You could have a basic nose bone too. Those bones won't need to be hi res, their job is to block light.

 

Sorry for quoting myself here, but this is , what I'm talking about. I know, it is hard to see. The skeleton fingers should be thicker, but I made a quick and dirty conversion from a Poser skeleton.
1.) without bones
2.) with bones
This should fix the glowing nose issue too.

I really loved that approach! As a noob onto this "photorealism" business, and since I dont' own any skeleton (other than my own), I wanted to try a hackish, quick & dirty approach: I created a geoshell over my character but dialed the Offset Distance at -0.50, so it's under the skin. I just put a "hard plastic" shader on the geoshell and hid the "nails" material zone on it.. I did this quick render and I used this technique on my gallery (Low Key #1). No photorealism there, but I sort of liked the look. I still think a full skeleton will look better.

This is a brilliant idea! :D Very cool effect!

Curious - does the shell fit just on the tips or the whole hand.  Could it morph with a pose or a long acryllic nail?

A new FE Decoration Vol 4, has just come out. The hair is recognisably Monica Hair, and apparently the same smile poses as the previous sets. The characters are an adult G8F morph of some sort.

Extremely long lag times for loading content (e.g., one character).​

That basically tells me a log file full of error messages, the more errors you have the longer it takes to load, the more bogged down DS gets the slower it works, and all of that isn't doing your computer any favours either.

The morph handling system in DS4 is basically just an evolution of what we had in DS1, DS2 and DS3, sadly it's far from brilliant. It's main problem is that it reads and processes every single DSF asset file in a figures Morphs folder, and then trys to create the sliders and all of their ERC connections.

What else would it do? Not having the sliders for isntalled products, or having sliders but not the links to make them interact correctly, would hardly enhance usability

This wouldn't be an issue if every morph product was stand alone, and just needed the figures Starter Essentials installed to work cleanly. That sadly isn't the case with most of the morph based products sold here, they require other products to work cleanly, and if you don't have those other products you get error messages in the log.

A lot of products have corrective morphs so that they will work nicely with other products, that doesn't mean they require them.

This is something that needs to be sorted NOW, the way the worlds economy is going the last thing DAZ needs, is for people to be so P'd off at the long load times that they stop buying.

On obvious fix is not to install stuff you are not using. At least in the case of Daz content, when running DS thaT has been allowed to get your order history, you will be prompted to reinstalL anything that is required but not installed - so arguably the issue is "fixed".

Extremely long lag times for loading content (e.g., one character).​

That basically tells me a log file full of error messages, the more errors you have the longer it takes to load, the more bogged down DS gets the slower it works, and all of that isn't doing your computer any favours either.

The morph handling system in DS4 is basically just an evolution of what we had in DS1, DS2 and DS3, sadly it's far from brilliant. It's main problem is that it reads and processes every single DSF asset file in a figures Morphs folder, and then trys to create the sliders and all of their ERC connections.

This wouldn't be an issue if every morph product was stand alone, and just needed the figures Starter Essentials installed to work cleanly. That sadly isn't the case with most of the morph based products sold here, they require other products to work cleanly, and if you don't have those other products you get error messages in the log.

This is something that needs to be sorted NOW, the way the worlds economy is going the last thing DAZ needs, is for people to be so P'd off at the long load times that they stop buying.

While I understand that some people view the sameness as a problem since it feels like they're re-buying the same character but slightly tweaked all over again, my question is why would anyone need to buy it if they feel it looks the same as something they already own? There's some vendors who do have a similar style in characters they make, but I've only bought one or two from these vendors when it wasn't included in some bundle or special deal. For the rest? I skip them. I feel the same way towards clothes too.

 

I imagine some of the reason is style and I don't mean artistic style. More like ... some characters are hyper realistic and mimic the look and feel of everyday humans, like the bluejaunte and Saiyaness characters. Some are more stylized and some fall in between ... like Mousso's characters who look like famous actors or mimic the look of people who appear on fashion magazines. While this is great diversity and caters to different tastes it can be difficult to blend in all those people into one scene and have them look believably from one world. I guess this is one of the reasons why people wish the same PA makes characters in the same stylistic range but looking entirely different.

There are SO many morphs you can use to create your own characters! Create your own style!
Also, in real life, people are very diverse. The cover model who goes to pick up a prescription from CVS is going to look a lot different from the cashier but they are in the same CVS...

Second, handsculpted PA faces come with HD details that align perfectly with their sculpt. You don't get this if you use your own morphs and the results are less perfect.

Third - this is like the male content discussion. People ask for Male content that don't sell well and people are told why don't you create your own content. Except HD morphs and dforce SBH hair you can do everything yourself. But maybe some people don't want to? Or can't? It takes some skill and time and patience to create good characters, be it a custom morph or via the morph dials. Not everyone want to do this, that's why people buy characters. Nothing wrong with that. I only own 15 or so characters because I like to create my own stuff but not everyone wants to and that's why we have so many assets in the store.

Finally, this is DAZ. People use DAZ so they don't have to do everything themselves and still can have good results. This is the fun part of DAZ. We can do renders with a great variety of models and don't have to learn how to model, sculpt and texture if we don't want to. If you want to it's great. If you don't want to it's fine, too, because you can pay others to do it for you.

While I understand that some people view the sameness as a problem since it feels like they're re-buying the same character but slightly tweaked all over again, my question is why would anyone need to buy it if they feel it looks the same as something they already own? There's some vendors who do have a similar style in characters they make, but I've only bought one or two from these vendors when it wasn't included in some bundle or special deal. For the rest? I skip them. I feel the same way towards clothes too.

 

I imagine some of the reason is style and I don't mean artistic style. More like ... some characters are hyper realistic and mimic the look and feel of everyday humans, like the bluejaunte and Saiyaness characters. Some are more stylized and some fall in between ... like Mousso's characters who look like famous actors or mimic the look of people who appear on fashion magazines. While this is great diversity and caters to different tastes it can be difficult to blend in all those people into one scene and have them look believably from one world. I guess this is one of the reasons why people wish the same PA makes characters in the same stylistic range but looking entirely different.

There are SO many morphs you can use to create your own characters! Create your own style!
Also, in real life, people are very diverse. The cover model who goes to pick up a prescription from CVS is going to look a lot different from the cashier but they are in the same CVS...

The production description says you can easily spot which asset you have used for your dials.

Does this also work the other way around?

Lets say i want to dial my own character using only below morph sets:

https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-head-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-body-morphs

Can i 'filter' those out and use them.
I know some PA's use a prefix for their slider(s) so those are easy to find, however this isn't always the case.

If i was to make some head and body presets to give away in the freebee or maybe even sell them (once i get the quality i like, and feedback from people they would actualy be interested in this (as lets face it, what i can slide anybody can as well).) I obviously want too use as little assets as possible.

FWIW, and for future reference, some things don't really transfer over to (current) DS through the bridge consistently. It feels like a timing issue, actually.

I recently tried to xfer the ribbed-cage that Horo and Dave included with the spherical mapper tool (i think that was the source), and I got about 2/3rds to DS one time, then nothing would xfer reliably again - certainly not the whole thing or the rest of it. (I don't blame the rib-cage!).

It did not export as an OBJ either, but maybe because of the way Bryce uses boolean modelling and the complex conversions that would be needed to convert anything complex. I think I let that effort run for a few hours and it never really worked. None of the other available formats worked either - I even have the missing dxf export dll and no go.

The only thing I did not try was to transfer smaller things (or pieces of a set) to see if the smaller parts/amounts of data would transfer, rather than the whole thing. "The Machine" is pretty big. I also don't think it's glued-together correctly from the two pieces either, but it looks pretty good from most angles in Bryce.

cheers,

--ms

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I am a dial slider with lots of morph packages.  This product makes creating so much easier! 

Hello, everytime I use Face Transfer, which I bought and entered the serial number, once I restart Daz and reopen the saved file, I get the missing files warning that it cannot load the jpg related to the new textures...

I use Daz 4.12.1.117  Windows 10, 32 gig of ram plenty of free gigs on all my drives.

I know theses files are temporary files and get deleted once Daz is closed.

How should I proceed to prevent this and be able to reopen the scene?

Thanks.

Just out of curiosity to see what type of scene somebody could come up  with. I attached the BVH and facial motion DUF I was working with. I'm pretty sure I can't attach the music but if you search for "Lipstick" you should be able to find it. The BVH is for G8, don't forget to turn off all limits and unlock nodes, (selected and Pose) while you have all selected. The facial you need to drag and drop onto a G1 figure and the use Mcasul's Trans Express script to transfer to G8. Then you can save the face data to an aniblock  making sure that you put a check in the Morphs/Values block. I hope somebody trys to experiment with this and posts their creation.

is the spawn morph still being worked on?

It will probably be the next add-on for Mesh Grabber, but I'll probably do a different product first.