What about that gender morph that lets you switch up the body shapes and such?

Now sure where it came from (I think it's a new thing?) but I've used it a fair bit.

I have actually bought two outfits that while they were rigged, they did not have a Single movement morph and the adjustment morphs that existed were not of any help. So when the figure were posed, I found out I either had to use dForce or the clothing would look bad with the pose. Since using dForce tend to make me crash 9 times out of 10 I am not too happy with using it, no matter how good it make the clothes look *sad smile* I badly need a better computer

Yeah, the "flowier" clothing could use more bones or movement morphs, that's true. 

That's the problem Diva.. I wouldn't call either of these "flowy" so to say, sure the coat could be but there's been coats with movement morps before so.. *shrugs* https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-casual-suit-outfit-for-genesis-8-males and https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-long-coat-outfit-for-genesis-8-males  So unless there is some morphs hidden where I can't find them (and I have been looking for them) I can't help being rather disapointed, the product page also don't actually mention movement morphs so I assume they aren't there. *sad*

Diva: great work, looks really good.

FSMCDesigns: under the paramaters tan there is an option to freeze simulation but it seems to just make it not sim, it doesn’t make a morph out of it as far as I can tell.  Probably have to export and use morph loader to make a morph.  If anyone knows an easier way to do it, I’d love to know too.

Nice work Diva!

Anyone know of a way to freeze the dforce hair after it is draped? I know with dynamics you can freeze simulation and it creates a morph for the final shape and it can be parented and moved around. Any control like this for dforce hair?

Beautiful work 3DAGE!
Would rigging the petals with bones work? Just thinking out loud.
Thanks for sharing 

Edited to add:

I tried a quick test with a leaf with several sections, added bones and an IK chain which went from end to end.
I also tried a series of morphs...I think in general 3D lingo that may called a 'non linear morph'?...and that worked as well but it's a total 'brute force' approach. Maybe take screen grabs from an isometric view and load those into the vertex room and adjust the vertices for each morph to create a smooth morph?

I'm tired now, lol.

Okay, I'm a longtime Poser user and trying to learn DAZ. I've been working with some very old Poser World files and going by the little .txt help files to put some content that isn't in a Runtime into a Runtime so it will work. Here's what I know and questions about what I don't know. Anyone, feel free to jump in if I misunderstood this stuff at any point!

1. Will old Poser 4 stuff work in DAZ?

2. How many runtimes [actual directory folders for vendors and artists] can DAZ handle?

3. How do I point DAZ to my actual directory folders? Content Manager? Categories?

4. I moved away from storing my 3rd party items by vendor and now store them by artist, because many artists sell on multiple sites. Will this work, or do I need to reinstall by vendor? What if I have more than ten vendors?

Here's what I learned so far:

In Poser

From https://support.smithmicro.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1982171-poser-file-types

.obj or .obz     Goes into the Geometries folder. .obz is compressed. The creator of the file type will specify a particular folder, and it has to go in there or it won't load. The location is coded into the corresponding .pz3 file [or .pp2, cr2, etc].

Some .obj files have a corresponding .mtl or Material file. It goes with the .obj in the same folder.

If you want to change the shape of the object or add a morph manually, you use a program like Hexagon or Blender, if it's more than changing it within Poser or DAZ. If you want to try this, make a copy of whatever you want to modify. Don't ever, ever use your original file that you bought or downloaded! Play with primitives [simple cubes, pyramids, cylinders, etc that you can load into Hexagon] first and watch tutorials. Don't risk making your original file unuseable. But check the licensing of your model first if you want to sell it. More about licensing in another post.

.cr2                 A Poser Character file. Goes in Libraries/Character. You may add directories under Character for People, Hair, Textures, etc.

.hr2                A Poser Hair file. Goes in Libraries/Hair or Libraries/Character/Hair if you're keeping it there.

.pp2               A Poser Prop file. Goes in Libraries/Props and shows where the corresponding geometry file is in Geometries. It matters where the .obj file goes. If you want to change where the .obj file goes in Geometries, you have to edit the file path in the .pp2 or it won't find the .obj file that gives it its shape.

.pz2               A Poser Pose file. Goes in Libraries/Poses

.mc5 and .mc6   Poser materials files. Old models will have these, new models will use Shaders. Goes in Runtime/Materials

MAT poses, a file with a name that has MAT in it and the .pz2 extension. MC files are used in the Material Room, MAT poses are more limited and used in the Pose Room.

.lt2                Poser light files go in Libraries/Light

.cm2             Poser camera sets, in Libraries/Camera

.fc2               Poser face poses, or expressions go in Libraries/Face

.hd2              Poser hand poses go in Libraries/Hand

.pz3              Poser scene file [not to be confused with .pz2, which is a Pose file] goes in Libraries/Scene

.rsr or .png files might be with any of these file types, and these are the thumbnails that show you the product.

.pmd            Poser Morph Data files, might be with the other file types and should be kept with them. Morphs can be in the Libraries/Morphs folder, too, or might have an accompanying .obj file in the Geometries folder.

Confused yet? Bottom line, if you have a ReadMe file, that little text file, you will know where the files need to be. Some scene files have .cr2 and need to be in Characters. Some scenes are in the Props folder.

1. You can rearrange files in your Characters folder. Other folders, maybe not.

2. You can only have 10 content directories in DAZ. This is where I get very confused. I would like very much for someone who knows DAZ to post! Is it, folders on your drive? Is it, Content Manager paths?

3. I've found a lot of 3rd party content that didn't work stuffed in the Content directory. Do you always need to clean out the Content folder and put the stuff in other folders? I know not to touch Data and not to move People and other folders into Runtime. What's in the top of the vendor folder is for DAZ and what's in the Runtime is for Poser.

If you try to reorganize these files in Poser, you will mess up your files. I've done it and had to reinstall. Having worked in a library and loved it, I hate the mess, but if it works, don't fix it. The problem comes when you have these old models and maybe the artist was learning to package stuff so it works.

Enter Third Party packages, the ones that your DAZDIM doesn't install.

A lot of these come with both DAZ and Poser formats in the same package. So you'll have any one of these situations:

1. Just the .obj, no readme, no nothing. This is often the case with ShareCG sharecg.com, and the licensing info is on the page you download from.

2. A list of files, no folders.

3. A Libraries folder.

4. A Runtime folder, with or without both Libraries and Geometries.

5. A folder which names the object but not the artist.

6. A folder within the Libraries [Pose, Light, Character, etc] containing the files

7. Folders Content, People, [or Materials, etc] with a subdirectory Runtime.

8. Folders Data, People, etc with a Runtime.

9. Folder My Library and folders within it.

10. Just a Content folder.

So, it pays to unzip the folder in your Downloads folder and use a utility that gives you a Folder Name the same as the file you downloaded.

Examples:

I downloaded a .zip file from ShareCG called Man.zip. I unzipped it into my D:\Downloads\ShareCG directory and got:

ShareCG/Man

ShareCG/Man/My Library

ShareCG/Man/My Library/Data

ShareCG/Man/My Library/Content

ShareCG/Man/My Library/Man

ShareCG/Man/My Library/Man/Libraries

ShareCG/Man/My Library/Man/Libraries/Character

In the /Character folder is one file named Man.cr2

In the /Content folder is /Data and /People

• The problem with this archive is, there is no artist name. So, I fix it. I look in the ReadMe and the artist's name is NoCanDo.
• I make my own /Runtime folder and under Libraries, I put Characters/NoCanDo/Man, so at least in Characters, I can see who did the Man.cr2, but I can't fix the other directories without changing each file unless I want to edit them all, and I don't have the time for that. 

I go to my /ShareCG folder and copy the contents of /Content to it

• Then I copy the /Data directory to ShareCG in case there is something diff in there. If it finds duplicate files and they are the same, I tell it to Skip Files. If it finds duplicate files and they are more recent, I overwrite them.
• I repeat for /People
• I copy my made /Runtime file in.
• Then I check all the directories in the Zip for loose files, files that are not in a folder. I find Man.txt and copy it to the /Man folder. I delete all the now-empty directories and put the /Man folder in my /ReadMe's folder in ShareCG.
• Now I can trace the permissions later in my /ReadMe's file.

Example 2

        I download a file from a site new to me called mynewsite.com and download the Cute File [note this is totally made up!]

        I get CuteFile.zip, which has

My Library/cute.obj

       Obviously, I can't just use an .obj in Poser or DAZ...or can I? Sure, I can! I can simply import it. Both softwares can import many file formats.

       On the page I downloaded it from, the model is public domain, so I can modify and sell it, or do whatever I please with it. So, I right-click the page and choose Print. When the print dialog comes up, I choose Print To File. It offers to save Print.pdf but I want to know what I downloaded, so I change the name to Cute File.pdf and save it to my Downloads/MyNewSite folder that I just created off my download folder. If you're like me and download a LOT of freebies looking for something, anything similar to what I need so I won't have to create it, I like to make a folder for each vendor site and download it that way. Then I save all the original .zip or .7z or whatever archive files in my 3D/Bkp/ folder under the vendor name. It makes reinstalls easy. I keep my .pdf with the file so I know exactly what permissions I have since I do commercial book covers.

       But, what do you do with .obj files? You can't just stick them in your Geometries file because there's no file to point to them. I suggest that, under your MyNewSite file [substitute name of vendor like Renderosity, ShareCG, etc] make a directory for Object or what-have-you and keep the .pdf or readme.txt with it. Under Object make a directory for Cute File and keep all files you got with it together. Or, to avoid Runtime clutter, make a new directory for your objects, textures, brushes and things you use in other programs and make a folder for each vendor. It's a little work to set up, but you can use these files in your DAZ and Poser! Or maybe, store your prop files in Hexagon in your content folders and have a separate directory for all the 2D stuff like brushes for GIMP or Photoshop or Clip Studio, textures, etc. outside of your DAZ and Poser content.

      There are many sites for free textures. These can be .jpg, .png, .tiff, a lot of diff picture formats. You can load a texture in Poser and DAZ in several places. So, if you don't want to make a shader, or you want a bump map to use in your shader, you can load up a texture file. The usual caveat is that you can't use a texture so somebody could make a screenshot of your final render and use part of it as a texture file, so you want to avoid large areas with that texture. Again, texture sites will spell out the licensing.

       So, you could keep .obj, .fbx [game-ready files], graphics files like .jpg etc, even your photographs for backgrounds. I take lots of pictures of grass, parking areas, gravel, asphalt, etc for this use. Be sure you read up on what permissions you need to use photos of famous buildings, etc. Sometimes you have to contact the property owner for a release. If you go to a site like shutterstock.com, they have articles on legal stuff for photographers. It's worth reading to save yourself a lot of legal hassles! If you are selling the output of your work, you have to read every readme.txt and read up on what you can and can't photograph for commercial use. If it's from a movie, cartoon series, book [for distinctive characters and alien races, etc], or comic strip, you can't sell the work, generally. Don't assume if it's ok to use a 2D picture for a screensaver that you can use it as a background.

       Don't think they don't come after small outfits. I used to frequent a small troupe of talented actors in a major city. They did a hilarious play with references to a lot of science fiction movies. They happened to have some Star Trek references. I didn't think the set art or costumes were very similar to Paramount at all! But Paramount sued them. This group of actors had gone in together to buy an old theatre and this production finally put them in the black, until Paramount. They were not rich or making incredible amounts of money. This lawsuit nearly put them out of business! All us loyal customers were mad, but that didn't help them at all. Don't risk it. Check and follow any and all licensing! It is a lot easier to avoid trouble than to find it and try to get out of it. There's a lot of fan art out there and a lot of these folks don't care about the legal stuff, so they don't warn you that this model is based off a movie. Do a Google image search on the item. Beware of pirated stuff, too.

       So, now you know what I know, and I hope I haven't confused anybody! I just figured I'd share some of what I've found out since 2009, and I'm eager to bridge this with what I don't know. Where to put files is a recurring subject for all us new to DAZ folks, and I need to learn a lot more. I also need to know if my understanding of where to put Poser files is wrong anywhere because I plan to continue using it as well. I'm constantly trying to figure out the best ways to keep my files so I can find them in Poser, in Vue, in DAZ now, and in GIMP and Blender! Any ideas welcome!

       Oh, I am working on a PC, a Microsoft Surface [loving it!] with x64 architecture [which means it's more efficient than an x32], an i7 Intel processor with 2 cores and 4 processors [it's got horsepower], 2.5 gigahertz speed [moderately fast], 16 gigabytes of RAM [lots of memory for number-crunching during renders], my graphics card is an NVIDEA GeForce GPU with 1 gigabyte of RAM on it [I would prefer more RAM on the card itself, but it has a pretty good processing time on my renders despite that] and it also has the Intel Graphics 520 chip with 1 GB of RAM but I don't use it. As I understand it, my GeForce GPU is kind of a hybrid for gaming and rendering. I sacrificed a little processing power I had on my MSI machine with the NVIDEA Quadro card, but I had major problems with MSI and will not buy another of their workstations, so I am priced out of Quadro-class machines, unfortunately. Since I'm disabled the lighter weight on the Surface and the fact that it runs all of my graphics software makes me a fan. Not to mention I can take it with me when I'm waiting forever in the doctor's office....

Am I correct in thinking that dForce clothing will work with G3 characters but only when dForce is applied, not when used as rigged clothing? Just for clarity because this is the reason I don't buy dFroce clothing - it is always promoted as being for G8 and I don't buy G8 (exept for Edie but she's a special case).

If you change the Scene Identification of the clothing item it should preserve all the movement morphs and such. I use that trick anytime I'm working with G3 and want G8 clothing or hair on them. SickleYield has a quick tutorial on how to do it:

https://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Convert-Clothing-G3-to-G8-G8-to-G3-686682065

The part you'll want is toward the bottom under "Reversing the Process (Genesis 8 Clothing to Genesis 3)".

She recommends posing G3 to be more in the "A pose" that G8 has, but I find that most of the time that step isn't needed. :) I also find that the last part the "transfer rigging" usually isn't needed either.

Thank you ... I'm tempted to risk buying some G8 clothes for my G3 wardrobe now. :)

another way of extending on what Cris says above:  The original UV (surface) maps of your starting object meshes (e.g. clothes) are bound to the *exact* geometry (vertex/polygons) mesh that they were created for. As soon as you change (add, combine, or delete) any points or lines in any object mesh, you must also (somehow) regenerate the UV maps to match the new mesh. None of the mesh editors that I know of do this automatically (could be wrong), but a few tools can be finessed into doing what you'd like to do. (FWIW, Morphs have this same 'exact' geometry constraint - you move vertex points around when making morphs, but you cannot add, remove, or combine them when creating morphs - the ending count and order must exactly match the starting count and order, or the morph import process will fail.)

There are a couple of threads here in the DAZ forums that describe the use of Blender or UVLayout (i think) to load, regroup things, and then weld nearby points as you'd like to do, and save back the mesh with the desired changes also reflected in the UVmaps (which are now different from the originals, but will work as you expect in any rendering context, including D-force). Again, others may have magic tools that do this better. I'm hoping so! I don't believe Hexagon can do this, so any mesh changes like welding mean you have to remap the UVs, or make new ones in Hexagon, or a UV editor like UVmapper, UVLayout, 3DPainter, or most other mesh editors as well. (others who know better can advise as to the benefits of the various tools.)

There's also a good youtube tutorial (sickleyield?) on using DS and D-force tools to 'freeze' things (as if you welded them?). I have an interest in this as well, but no experience using any of it yet. I haven't gotten to that part of my project...

Let us know if you find anything that helps!

cheers,

--ms

(edited to clarify)

That's helpful MS thank you!  Even though it's not what I wanted to hear :)

I've been using the dForce weight map to immobilize certain things, and that works great.

However it does not help with buttons that aren't welded on, because setting their 

weights to zero makes them stationary, when the clothes they are supposed to be attached to 

are moving.  It's also a problem with hems that aren't attached, you want them to move, but 

they just fall off.  the weight map doesn't help with that.

For my latest project I solved it by deleting the hems!  And using the dforce weight map to 

keep the various panels attached where they needed to be.

Anyway thanks for taking the time to respond Chris :)

I have actually bought two outfits that while they were rigged, they did not have a Single movement morph and the adjustment morphs that existed were not of any help. So when the figure were posed, I found out I either had to use dForce or the clothing would look bad with the pose. Since using dForce tend to make me crash 9 times out of 10 I am not too happy with using it, no matter how good it make the clothes look *sad smile* I badly need a better computer

Yeah, the "flowier" clothing could use more bones or movement morphs, that's true. 

I have actually bought two outfits that while they were rigged, they did not have a Single movement morph and the adjustment morphs that existed were not of any help. So when the figure were posed, I found out I either had to use dForce or the clothing would look bad with the pose. Since using dForce tend to make me crash 9 times out of 10 I am not too happy with using it, no matter how good it make the clothes look *sad smile* I badly need a better computer

Good thing for the Daz Return! At least when you return the clothing if it doesn't work in the Daz world, they are still brand new and smell terrific.

...

Dforce is a tricky thing, it all depends on what processor wether Gpu ro Cpu. I have had some issues with it erroring on some clothing half way through. It's still a in progress system. When it works, it's awesome. To see actual weight of the garmet fitting the figure is quite cool, I can't weight to see what the future brings for this system. hehe!

...I have an old system with limited CPU/Memory resources.  The last time I tried something that required running an animation sequence (motion blur only 5 frames) it took 16.5 hours to render.  Granted a Dforce sim would not take that long but longer than I wish to wait particularly if I find I need to repose the character after he/she is placed in the scene. I may be doing more clothes shopping at the "other store" as they also still sell clothing for older generations (like G2/G3)

Another incredible instrument set, Protozoon. Thank you.

I should say that the figure is G3F, transferred through Riversoft Arts Assembly Line via Bone Doctor. Not sure if it's an exact transfer, but pretty close. Apologies to Protozoon if it is off a little.

I have actually bought two outfits that while they were rigged, they did not have a Single movement morph and the adjustment morphs that existed were not of any help. So when the figure were posed, I found out I either had to use dForce or the clothing would look bad with the pose. Since using dForce tend to make me crash 9 times out of 10 I am not too happy with using it, no matter how good it make the clothes look *sad smile* I badly need a better computer

Good thing for the Daz Return! At least when you return the clothing if it doesn't work in the Daz world, they are still brand new and smell terrific.

Dforce is a tricky thing, it all depends on what processor wether Gpu ro Cpu. I have had some issues with it erroring on some clothing half way through. It's still a in progress system. When it works, it's awesome. To see actual weight of the garmet fitting the figure is quite cool, I can't weight to see what the future brings for this system. hehe!

I have actually bought two outfits that while they were rigged, they did not have a Single movement morph and the adjustment morphs that existed were not of any help. So when the figure were posed, I found out I either had to use dForce or the clothing would look bad with the pose. Since using dForce tend to make me crash 9 times out of 10 I am not too happy with using it, no matter how good it make the clothes look *sad smile* I badly need a better computer

Am I correct in thinking that dForce clothing will work with G3 characters but only when dForce is applied, not when used as rigged clothing? Just for clarity because this is the reason I don't buy dFroce clothing - it is always promoted as being for G8 and I don't buy G8 (exept for Edie but she's a special case).

If you change the Scene Identification of the clothing item it should preserve all the movement morphs and such. I use that trick anytime I'm working with G3 and want G8 clothing or hair on them. SickleYield has a quick tutorial on how to do it:

https://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Convert-Clothing-G3-to-G8-G8-to-G3-686682065

The part you'll want is toward the bottom under "Reversing the Process (Genesis 8 Clothing to Genesis 3)".

She recommends posing G3 to be more in the "A pose" that G8 has, but I find that most of the time that step isn't needed. :) I also find that the last part the "transfer rigging" usually isn't needed either.

my ole dreamweaver 8 can't ftps

need ftps to transfer big files to my site.  filezilla still ugly?

reading that firefox can't play a mp4, has to be ogg ?

using css still en vogue?  cant keep up.

almost spent my lotto money on a curved monitor.  description said 2 hdmi, but didn't see 2 hdmi in the product pictures. 

Deleting them in the UI won't delete the asset files, if you have saved them. For that you need to remove the .dsf file for the morph, in /Data/Daz 3D/Genesis #/Male (or Female)/Morphs/Author/Product - where Author and Product are the names you entered in the options dialogue when saving.

Lyrra's morph is not in the cards for me at this time.  But thanks for offering the suggestion.

Regarding Leana's last reply in this thread, I did purchase three of the clones today, but I'd like to ask, how do i convert the V4 clothing to fit G2F and G3F (M4 to G3M)?  Are there any tutorials on how to do this?

For anyone else who finds themselves with the same problem. What I have found so far is:

I have a Directory Called "G8 Morphs", and it is pretty obvious what it is for. Anyway, after having done many things, such as, strip Daz Studio completely from my machine, download a new copy of Studio and install. Odd thing there? Even though I went to great lengths to get rid of everything to do with Daz from all over my machine, when I installed it, and opened it, there were my Directories, there already!!!!!!

God, Daz is like a Virus!

Anyway, I got to thinking whether it might be a morph causing the problem, not so much in the thigh, but in the Hip. So removed "G8 Morphs" Directory from the Program, re-started it, and, problem cleared!!!!

Culprit? Well at a guess, and it is only a guess at the moment, I think it might be either Zevo's Bend Controls, or, more likely, one of a couple of Genital Morphs I'd added for some extra controls.

I will be gradually adding the Morphs back into the Directory as and when I need to, keeping a close eye on the Hip Parameters.

So..... Problem sort of solved!!

Lyrra at Renderosity has products that will turn M4 & V4 into kids by adding a Child Dial morph. You can use as much or as little of it as you please and so get characters anywhere between Kids 4 age (preschoolers) and teenagers-young adults. But it only works in Poser 10 & up, far as I know.