"I found that "Save as... > Scene" did not actually save my work properly intact"

It should. I have done this countless times for character WIPs that I'm working on, and I have never had those scenes fail to reload without the character appearing as it was where I left off. I cannot for the life of me understand why this would be happening to you. You're not creating the morph slider and trying to save that as part of the scene, are you? I'm just grasping at straws here.

That is correct. You can load the dForce hair (if you can) and then add the additional warg fur on top and it should work pretty well. It might not be perfect but it would work well in most circumstances.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was actually talking about the morph parameter included with the Warg (Parameters > Actor > Breeds > Warg Fur HD) that makes the model itself (neck, shoulders, and tail) look like it has more... floof? Poof? I completely forgot about the included fibermesh fur since I use LAMH presets instead. Though it may end up a Daz Studio crasher, combining a LAMH preset with the Strand Based Hair might be another option.

If you're talking about breed shape sliders and whatnot, you can combine them all. 

In regards to LAMH, with AM's Lion, I combined the strand-based dForce mane with the Catalyst fur and it came out wonderful. However, I don't know about stuff that isn't supported by the Catalyzer. I've been having a lot of problems lately with LAMH and getting presets for other figures to work right by exporting to .obj. There's a Dog 8 thread where a couple people shared their presets and one would just crash out Daz every time I tried to load the preset in through the LAMH plugin (I have the full plugin). I would totally pay for AM to do Catalyst presets for more animals...in particular Dog 8, Horse 2, and the various HiveWire animals. Without the Catalyzer support, LAMH is just...so hard to deal with if you use Iray. Other than AM's own animals, which now all have been updated for Catalyzer support, the only presets I've had consistent luck with are the ones I've gotten that were made specifically for the HiveWire animals (Housecat, Elk, etc.) because they have very detailed instructions on fur density values. Even so, they still take forever to load in and easily blow out a scene in terms of size unless you render the animals as a separate layer (I normally try to render everything together because that's just my style and canvases don't work right with the in-render bloom shader that I use religiously). 

*edit so you can see the lion*

 

What about copying the morph into a new one and using ERC Bake on that new one?

In theory it should destroy the copy but keep the original.

I was thinking the same thing, but I actually haven't found a way to duplicate a property.  The "Copy Selected Property" command only copies its numeric value, and "Property Cloner" won't allow me to add the cloned property to the same object as the original.  Hopefully I'm missing something obvious here, because if I could duplicate properties, this suggestion would make the process relatively easy.

You could bake, then save - depending on the proerpties used - a Pose or Shape preset (or a Properties preset to get both), go back to the unbaked version of the figure and apply the preset(s) with th master slider zeroed.

That would probably work. Actually I think the only issue I have with this option is that I'll very quickly pile up preset files in the database that I only used for one frame each (and flushing files out of the database seems easier said than done), but that's not an immediate problem.

Thanks for the replies.

That is correct. You can load the dForce hair (if you can) and then add the additional warg fur on top and it should work pretty well. It might not be perfect but it would work well in most circumstances.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I was actually talking about the morph parameter included with the Warg (Parameters > Actor > Breeds > Warg Fur HD) that makes the model itself (neck, shoulders, and tail) look like it has more... floof? Poof? I completely forgot about the included fibermesh fur since I use LAMH presets instead. Though it may end up a Daz Studio crasher, combining a LAMH preset with the Strand Based Hair might be another option.

# Program to:
#   1: Shorten name of shapekeys
#   2: Transfer shapekeys from source object to target object

import bpy

context = bpy.context

######### Change for your character here ##########

#Character with shapekeys you want to transfer
source_object = 'Genesis8Female.Shape.001'
source_key = "Key.001" # formatting note: last three digits must match character shape last 3 digits

#Character you want to transfer shapekeys to
target_object = 'Genesis8Female.Shape'
target_key = "Key" # formatting note: no 3 digits if character doesn't have 3 digits 

#Part of shapekey name you want to remove
str_to_remove = 'Genesis8Female__'

###################################################


def transfer_shapekeys():

    bpy.data.objects[source_object].select_set (True)
    context.view_layer.objects.active  = bpy.data.objects[target_object]

    SK_Slot = 1
    

    for shapekey in bpy.data.shape_keys:
         i = len (shapekey.key_blocks)-1
         for keyblock in (shapekey.key_blocks):

            context.view_layer.objects.active  = bpy.data.objects[source_object]
            bpy.context.object.active_shape_key_index = SK_Slot
            current_morph = bpy.data.shape_keys[source_key].key_blocks[SK_Slot].name
            print (current_morph,"Transfered")

            bpy.data.objects[source_object].select_set (True)
            context.view_layer.objects.active  = bpy.data.objects[target_object]
            bpy.ops.object.shape_key_transfer()

            if SK_Slot == i:
                return

            SK_Slot += 1

def shorten_shapekey_name():

    SK_Slot = 0
    for shapekey in bpy.data.shape_keys:
         for keyblock in shapekey.key_blocks:
            current_morph = bpy.data.shape_keys[source_key].key_blocks[SK_Slot].name
            print ("renamed",current_morph.replace(str_to_remove, ''))
            bpy.data.shape_keys[source_key].key_blocks[SK_Slot].name = (current_morph.replace(str_to_remove, ''))
            SK_Slot += 1


# Start of Main Program

# Deselect all
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

#Shorten shapekey names
shorten_shapekey_name() 

#Transfer shapekeys from source to target
transfer_shapekeys()

# Deselect all
bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')

print ("Done!")

Below are a couple of Blender scripts I put together to help speed up my workflow while working with Daz3d characters.

They are set up for Genesis 8 characters but can be modified to fit your needs. They should work with 2.80 or 2.81

The first combines all the material slots that use the same texture, removes the unused material slot names, renames pupils to eyes, and shortens long names like Genesis8FemaleEyelashes_EyeMoisture to Eyelash_Moisture

The second script can be used to transfer shapekeys from one object to another (Object have to have the same poly count as usual)
It is also set up to remove the "Genesis8Female__" or "Genesis8Male__" from the beginning of the shapekey names.

No need to install these anywhere. In Blender click on the Scripting tab, under Text, select New, and paste the code in.

Make any changes in the script for your character and hit Run Script

To see the progress of the script click on the Blender Window menu, and select Toggle System Console

If you have any questions, feedback or ways the script could be improved please let me know.

 

Glad to see the wolf out. I used my warg texture and hair (since I can't use the dForce hair) and that is a decent option for those people, as well.

 

The Warg comes with a morph to make the fur fuller. I don't have any of the new breeds yet, so I can't test this for myself, but can the Warg's fur morphs also be used to make the wolf and husky coats look thicker?

I don't believe so - these new breeds use strand-based hair and Warg HD does not. 

there is of course no reason you couldn't load both furs other than the limitations of your rig if any

Glad to see the wolf out. I used my warg texture and hair (since I can't use the dForce hair) and that is a decent option for those people, as well.

 

The Warg comes with a morph to make the fur fuller. I don't have any of the new breeds yet, so I can't test this for myself, but can the Warg's fur morphs also be used to make the wolf and husky coats look thicker?

I don't believe so - these new breeds use strand-based hair and Warg HD does not. 

Are you using the skeletons alone, or with Victoria 4, or have yu used AutoFit in Daz Studo to make them fit another figure?

Hi Richard, Indeed I am attempting to fit the V4 skeleton to a Genesis 8 Female (Victoria 8 to be precise) By using some of the few instructions I was able to find searching various forums on the subject. The method that I am following is to first fit teh skeleton to the regular Genesis 1 figure and then fit to Genesis 8 (in may case Victoris 8 which I am hoping woudl have the same results as Genesis 8 but am not sure) the results are so so but these does seem to be substantial distortion when reshaping the character's shape. I am quite good with Zbrush so I will be attempting to bring the skeleton into Zbrush to edit and fix distortion but my first attempt to do so was not successful. so I shall keep hammering away to get it right. (Wish there was an updated anatomical character or set of character's ala Zygote's offerings. This would substantially increase Daz's value as a valuable tool for medical simulation and studies. 

Are you using the skeletons alone, or with Victoria 4, or have yu used AutoFit in Daz Studo to make them fit another figure?

Hi Richard, Indeed I am attempting to fit the V4 skeleton to a Genesis 8 Female (Victoria 8 to be precise) By using some of the few instructions I was able to find searching various forums on the subject. The method that I am following is to first fit teh skeleton to the regular Genesis 1 figure and then fit to Genesis 8 (in may case Victoris 8 which I am hoping woudl have the same results as Genesis 8 but am not sure) the results are so so but these does seem to be substantial distortion when reshaping the character's shape. I am quite good with Zbrush so I will be attempting to bring the skeleton into Zbrush to edit and fix distortion but my first attempt to do so was not successful. so I shall keep hammering away to get it right. (Wish there was an updated anatomical character or set of character's ala Zygote's offerings. This would substantially increase Daz's value as a valuable tool for medical simulation and studies. 

When you AutoFit the original bones are ignored, DS just projects the bones from the base figure into the model - as a result the helpers can no longer be switched off, and the bones cannot be posed individually. If your ZBrush skills are up to the job I'd just take the exported skeleton (hide the helprs and export as OBJ - then they will be gone), adjust it in ZBrush to fit inside the Genesis 8 figure, export the result as OBJ from ZBrush, import that into DS (making sure that you use the same preset in the options dialogue, so everything is scaled correctly) and then use Edit>Figure>Transfer Utility to rig the model (set the Source to Genesis 8 female, the target to your imported OBJ). It won't be perfect, and you may want to use the rigging tools in DS to enhance it, but it should be better than the AutoFit.

Thank you once again Richard (your suggestions are the most helpful) I will give your latest suggestion a try. I'm wondering if the Midnight Skeleton for G8M might be an easier route for fitting within G8F (or Victoria 8) via autofit perhaps or one of the utilities for swapping around character UV, attripbutes, Shapes and poses? I shall experiment a bit but you seem to know right away what would work.

Thanks in advance :)
Cheers
(and happy New Year BTW)

Glad to see the wolf out. I used my warg texture and hair (since I can't use the dForce hair) and that is a decent option for those people, as well.

You need to edit the collision offset of the dforce materials.  The messages you see flying by ("rest length < collision offset") is telling you that there is a collision or poke-through happening before the simulation even begins.  This will add significant delay to the simulation and is often the cause of "exploding" results (especially if the model is moving/animated).  Edit the dforce surfaces and adjust the collision offset to be smaller than the numbers indicated.

It's not collision, as I understand it, it's that the spring (edge) between two vertices of the model is shorter than the offset value. You are, I beleve, correct ns aying that it will slow the simulation (and may lead to undesirable results) as the rest length and the offset value will be fighting.

Alternatively, and perhaps the better option in this case since the collision is so close, is if there is a morph built-in to expand the Jeans (so it's not so close to the figure's skin) which may also help speed up the simulation. 

Last, turn off Smoothing for the Jeans before starting the simulation.

 

If this is the case, then it ought to be unnecessary when self-collision is turned off. Yet it still does the spring extending.

And I agree that it is very, very, very annoying to click the simulate button and realize one ohnosecond later that you needed to do something else first, and have to wait half an hour before it'll let you cancel.

I am currently tinkering with DAZ3D, browsing some Merchant Resource morph slider packages I bought, with the aim of making a character/character morph. I am hoping to do a little at a time and save my efforts as WIP's along the way so I can keep the sliders where I put them & go back later & tinker with them if I need to (or simply as a "Restore" point in case something goes wrong), prior to exporting a fully baked result for display & possible release.

As a test, I did this & did the "Save as... > Scene", which seems to be the advised method HERE.

I found that "Save as... > Scene" did not actually save my work properly intact. It did not look like the work I had done, as though many of the sliders were simply not registering at all as part of a scene save.

(Edit: I have repeated this a couple more times with fresh attempts, same result)

As the title says - what is the best & proper way to save a character so that this does not happen?

If it helps, the morph packages I was using at the time are the various EmmaAndJordi G8 face morphs Merchant Resource - "EJ Face Morphs And Details for Genesis 8 Female(s)", and the various Handspan Studios / Thorne  "Genesis 8 Female Head Morph Resource Kit"s.

(Is this actually the right place for such a query? How likely is it to be fully responded to here? Would there be a better place to post it with a higher chance of being solved?)

I had this render done, then it needed more light. And then it took almost two hours to cook. The hair is default load for all of them. I do suggest not opening their mouths before dForce, I found the hair stuck on the Shepherd, looking like almost drool?

I am not an expert on Huskies, Shepherds, and espeically not Wolves; but I dogsit two Huskies that are very different from one another as can be. One is big boned and stolid. The other is skinny and thin, and a wired crazy fool. Both are loving and can knock me over if I don't brace for it. I only have vague memories of my grandparent's Shepherd they had when I was still pre-K. The Huskies do have thick fur, needing almost constant brushing year-round and thorough grooming, or they mat bad. 

I would buy a texture pack for Huskies that could capture the wonderful different face markings they come with. I love their looks. I also would love a morph pack to widen the legs, to allow for that stout/big bone guy. It may be available now and I just haven't found it.

I add my vote for DAZ Cat 8 or 9; 

Thank you DAZ and the artists who worked on these guys.

There is only the one skin for the body. The face paint blends in with it, so changing it wouldn't match. There are ways to tint it all keeping the existing textures and tuning some of the surface settings. There are many discussions about that, and about as many opinions on how best to do it.

With The Evil Clown selected in the scene, you will find the Evil Clown Grin on the Parameters tab, Actor -> Pose Controls -> Head -> Expressions. Specialized morphs or poses are sometimes hard to find, so typing a keyword into the filter box at the top of the tab could greatly speed up the search. In this case, enter "Evil" or "Grin" in the filter, and you should get a few results instead of possibly hundreds to search through. The tree on the left will highlight the branches that have a match. I actually didn't know about this particular morph, it isn't mentioned anywhere, but looking at the promos, I tried various smiles without much success, but stumbled on the Evil Clown Grin quite by accident.

You need to edit the collision offset of the dforce materials.  The messages you see flying by ("rest length < collision offset") is telling you that there is a collision or poke-through happening before the simulation even begins.  This will add significant delay to the simulation and is often the cause of "exploding" results (especially if the model is moving/animated).  Edit the dforce surfaces and adjust the collision offset to be smaller than the numbers indicated.

It's not collision, as I understand it, it's that the spring (edge) between two vertices of the model is shorter than the offset value. You are, I beleve, correct ns aying that it will slow the simulation (and may lead to undesirable results) as the rest length and the offset value will be fighting.

Alternatively, and perhaps the better option in this case since the collision is so close, is if there is a morph built-in to expand the Jeans (so it's not so close to the figure's skin) which may also help speed up the simulation. 

Last, turn off Smoothing for the Jeans before starting the simulation.

It is unfortunate that sometime cancelling a dforce simulation takes a while.  It is wise to start very short simulation when testing (do only the current frame, reduce the Stabilization Time, and lower the Collision Mode).

You need to edit the collision offset of the dforce materials.  The messages you see flying by ("rest length < collision offset") is telling you that there is a collision or poke-through happening before the simulation even begins.  This will add significant delay to the simulation and is often the cause of "exploding" results (especially if the model is moving/animated).  Edit the dforce surfaces and adjust the collision offset to be smaller than the numbers indicated.

Alternatively, and perhaps the better option in this case since the collision is so close, is if there is a morph built-in to expand the Jeans (so it's not so close to the figure's skin) which may also help speed up the simulation. 

Last, turn off Smoothing for the Jeans before starting the simulation.

You can try this, it SOMETIMES works for me. Pose your figure on the timeline, then on the first frame with figure in the default pose, load the clothing item into the scene. Dont autofit it or parent it just do a default load. Then, while still on the first frame, use the clothings adjustment morphs to "fit" the item to the approximate shape and position of the figure. Once you are satisfied, run the simulation using the animated timeline duration and you MAY get a really nice drape. Often times though, wether or not this will work depends on how good the clothing item is with its morphs.

I feel your pain. I hate autofit with a passion and I really hope it is abandoned as dforce gets better at fitting. Sure it makes sense for some clothing items, but it is still an excercise in futility when trying to get good drapes on larger bodies. some people can do it really well. I cant.

Auto fit is used to fit clothes made for one figure eg: G3F, onto another figure eg: G8F, so I am not sure if that is what you dislike. Do you mean auto follow? This is what makes clothing fit when the clothing item is missing a fit morph for one or more of the morphs applied to the figure. 

Whatever it is that shrink wraps the clothes. Thats what I dont like. Thats autofollow?

Autofollow does not set out to shrinkwrap, indeed some clothing items seem to be in such a state to start with, however I guess it could have that effect in certain circumstances.

However I should add that I very much value autofollow, indeed it is one of the things that persuaded me that DS was superior to Poser, since relying soley on the morphs built into the clothing by the PA that made it was pretty restricting in the morphs one could apply to the body, and autofollow meant we did not need to do that any longer.

Sure, ill give you that. It needs to be replaced by a better technology though. Not sure what that'll be, but the tech has to improve.

You can try this, it SOMETIMES works for me. Pose your figure on the timeline, then on the first frame with figure in the default pose, load the clothing item into the scene. Dont autofit it or parent it just do a default load. Then, while still on the first frame, use the clothings adjustment morphs to "fit" the item to the approximate shape and position of the figure. Once you are satisfied, run the simulation using the animated timeline duration and you MAY get a really nice drape. Often times though, wether or not this will work depends on how good the clothing item is with its morphs.

I feel your pain. I hate autofit with a passion and I really hope it is abandoned as dforce gets better at fitting. Sure it makes sense for some clothing items, but it is still an excercise in futility when trying to get good drapes on larger bodies. some people can do it really well. I cant.

Auto fit is used to fit clothes made for one figure eg: G3F, onto another figure eg: G8F, so I am not sure if that is what you dislike. Do you mean auto follow? This is what makes clothing fit when the clothing item is missing a fit morph for one or more of the morphs applied to the figure. 

Whatever it is that shrink wraps the clothes. Thats what I dont like. Thats autofollow?

Autofollow does not set out to shrinkwrap, indeed some clothing items seem to be in such a state to start with, however I guess it could have that effect in certain circumstances.

However I should add that I very much value autofollow, indeed it is one of the things that persuaded me that DS was superior to Poser, since relying soley on the morphs built into the clothing by the PA that made it was pretty restricting in the morphs one could apply to the body, and autofollow meant we did not need to do that any longer.

You can try this, it SOMETIMES works for me. Pose your figure on the timeline, then on the first frame with figure in the default pose, load the clothing item into the scene. Dont autofit it or parent it just do a default load. Then, while still on the first frame, use the clothings adjustment morphs to "fit" the item to the approximate shape and position of the figure. Once you are satisfied, run the simulation using the animated timeline duration and you MAY get a really nice drape. Often times though, wether or not this will work depends on how good the clothing item is with its morphs.

I feel your pain. I hate autofit with a passion and I really hope it is abandoned as dforce gets better at fitting. Sure it makes sense for some clothing items, but it is still an excercise in futility when trying to get good drapes on larger bodies. some people can do it really well. I cant.

Auto fit is used to fit clothes made for one figure eg: G3F, onto another figure eg: G8F, so I am not sure if that is what you dislike. Do you mean auto follow? This is what makes clothing fit when the clothing item is missing a fit morph for one or more of the morphs applied to the figure. 

Whatever it is that shrink wraps the clothes. Thats what I dont like. Thats autofollow?

AutoFollow is the  transfer of unsupported morphs to fitted items - it can produce a shrink wrap effect.

You can try this, it SOMETIMES works for me. Pose your figure on the timeline, then on the first frame with figure in the default pose, load the clothing item into the scene. Dont autofit it or parent it just do a default load. Then, while still on the first frame, use the clothings adjustment morphs to "fit" the item to the approximate shape and position of the figure. Once you are satisfied, run the simulation using the animated timeline duration and you MAY get a really nice drape. Often times though, wether or not this will work depends on how good the clothing item is with its morphs.

I feel your pain. I hate autofit with a passion and I really hope it is abandoned as dforce gets better at fitting. Sure it makes sense for some clothing items, but it is still an excercise in futility when trying to get good drapes on larger bodies. some people can do it really well. I cant.

Auto fit is used to fit clothes made for one figure eg: G3F, onto another figure eg: G8F, so I am not sure if that is what you dislike. Do you mean auto follow? This is what makes clothing fit when the clothing item is missing a fit morph for one or more of the morphs applied to the figure. 

Whatever it is that shrink wraps the clothes. Thats what I dont like. Thats autofollow?