Thank you for all the suggestions, particularly those reminding of what morphs can and cannot do.

I decided to go back to basics, by breaking the model apart in Hexagon, then sending it back to Daz, and organising the components into groups. I have not added rigging yet, but using xtrans, xrot, etc, I can now raise, rotate and pitch the platform. I can also swing each leg in and out, and telecope them individually (each leg has four segments, something I forgot to mention in the OP). The leg braces need positioning by trial and error, but I can now produce a configuration which 'looks right'. However, I'm still a long way from making this into a simple prop which can be posed elegantly. Also, some things don't work so well, and I'd be grateful for thoughts on how to address any of them. I've posted a new pic to show where I've got to.

1) Seen from above, each pair of legs is separated by an angle of 120 degrees, so only one leg can align with one of Daz's orthogonal axes. The other two legs must be positioned using xrot and zrot in some combination, and I don't see a way to do this with a single morph.

2) Each leg has a brace (or arm) coupled to a ring on the central column. As the legs open and close, the ring should rise or fall, because leg, brace and central pole form a triangle, with two sides (leg and brace) having fixed lengths.

3) In the real world, the three legs would open and close in synchrony, but I have no idea how a single control can make that happen. I don't see a way to ensure that all 3 legs move together, or that the ring rises and falls to reflect the positions of the legs.

Incidentally, if I make more progress, what would be the rules, ethics and/or conventions of sharing the results here?

I know plenty of ways you could do this but none would use the dropdown menu

not knowing what video (or possibly having access to it as I am not DAZ+) I have no idea what they did

what I myself would do is send it to Hexagon, select and resize the inner ring then send it back as a morph

AndrewJJP and any other interested Parties, previewing my WIP Pressure Morphing using Squishy Human for Genesis 8 and 8.1 Female | Daz 3D. As I stated earlier, I had some limited success with weight mapping, but have been intrigued by the possibilities this new product brings to the table. Basic steps for these results:

1.Load a new Squishy G8F (Don't worry the morph will work on the G8.1F also!). Turn off Mesh Smoothing. Set the Mesh Resolution to at least 2.  I unhid the X and Z scale Parameters and favorited them for easy access.

2. Load the clothing separate from the figure, this will give the Squishy body and D-Form an obstacle to form around. Also turn off any Mesh Smoothing that may have loaded depending on the clothing.

3. In the Simulation tab, set Gravity to 0.0, and  turn off Start From Memorized Pose. Frames to Simulate should be set to Custom,(Note: it defaults to 1-30, which is fine)

4. Go to the timeline frame 15, and expand the G8F Squishy Human into the static clothing, it will look terrible, but that's OK! (Note: I used the Previously unhid X and Z scale properties, but any expansion or heavy morph will also work, I also added a bit of breast uplit for this Bikini top)

5. Set the animation frame to Zero, and hit Simulate. The 15 frames gives the Squishy body time to adapt to the static clothing, and then 15 frames to settle in. I ended up liking frame 17, only 2 frames after the max morphs were finalized. (Note: if you left the Start From Memorized Pose ON, the Squishy Body will sag unacceptably!)

6. Run the timeline arrow back and forth to find a frame you think is acceptable. Hide everything in the scene except the G8F (all internal structure, clothing and eyebrows), set the Resolution Level to Base, then export as a morph. This is where my WIP comes in. If I took out the morphs at that frame, the whole body shrinks back, but takes the areas under the clothing with it. I used Shape Splitter | Daz 3D in an attempt to isolate just the areas affected, The Hips worked well, but still got a bit of shoulder and armpit expansion. Also exported versions with and without the morphs applied, and tried a 50/50 split. All liveable at this point to get some Pressure morphing. So the three files are the Blaze Bikini Baseline Fit, My X-Splitter attempt, and the 50/50.

Hope that inspires some more experimentation, and look forward to seeing others results! TD

P.S. I could create a detailed Screen captured PDF of this basic process, but that may take me a couple of days to get too.

Finally got the mesh brows/lashes done: Black, blonde, red, brown, white.   He's wearing the blond here with the red eyes and infected socket textures.  Fantasy facial accent morph over the second head morph and fantasy teeth.  Was testing how the brows attached over the fantasy facial accent morph as the last few times they wouldn't follow the sculpt at all.  Which was frustrating.  Saved out the base skin settings (gloss, translucency, SSS), and will be resaving the base figure as I have tweaked the normal maps and teeth/mouth gloss a bit more.  Started working on the second arm tattoo, but not happy with it so not showing it yet.  Gonna set up some thumbnails after resaving the base figure again to at least let the system work those out while we head out for part of the day. Progress is going slow, but I'm only working on these on the weekends now rather than during the week to save my sanity.

PerttiA said:

ragamuffin57 said:

 tried this method and Daz just keeps crashing when trying to zero  genesis 8 base figure :(

What does you log say? (Help->Troubleshooting->View Log File)

Do not copy parts of the log to the message area, but attach the text file to your post with "Attach a file" above the "Post Comment" button. 

Thanks to you I was able to fix the problem was not with the character Ryilee (I do not have that character)  it was with CynderBlue misc long and square nails that was the problem.  I was able to remove the files and bingo all is good :). As I have other long finger morphs by the bucketload I am not going to miss that morph.  Thanks to your method  PerttiA I was able to view the offending morphs in the popup box. :)  Why Daz was acting up it  was a human error on my part why Daz was crashing  So Thanks

So what was it doing, squising the inside part of the torus? Somethign has to give. Anyway, I would think a dForm would do the job - place the base in the middle of the hole, the field also centred and extending into the actual ring, possibly use the dForm pane to adjust the spline (to cotrnol how strong the effect was as you go from centre of the filed to the edge) and then adjust the two scales that govern the hole - then spawn a morph (also on the dForm pane).

Ok, issue does not appear after loading the morph and materials. Its issue with base model itself. Disabling base bump on legs and torso creates this line between body and torso. I checked the textures and they seem to be alright. Also HD seems to be enabled.

Hylas said:

You can count the clock as a freebie as well because signing up to the newsletter is free and available to all. Not that it really matters in this case :)

Seems like I missed this when I signed up, was it attached in an email, or is there a different way to get it?

Also unrelated, I wasn't able to find any eyebrow freebie for G8F, neither mesh nor painted. The g3 one works fine, except for the morphs.

Buccaneer's Corner

Nay Free

Auto Shape Enhancer
iReal Shaders
V8 HD-Addon

Yay Free

Hair - Gwennili Hair
Hair shader - 72 'Funky Madness' Hair Shaders
Morph - Inga Britt
Skin - Irene Angevin (NSFW)
Brows - G3 Morphing Fibermesh Eyebrows and Pubic Hair
Lashes - PS Raeny Shape Morphs
Make-up - Genesis 8 Female Makeup Kit 1 - Lips and Eyeliner
Pants - Leather Outfit
Shirt - Blazer Uniform Set
Ring - Diamond Heart Ring
Necklace - Cross Necklaces
Bracelet - Braid Bracelets
Walls - Tweendeck
Lantern - Stable Builder
Sword - Rapiersword
Barrels/Food - Medieval Hovel
Wood Shader - Bed with dForce Blankets
Jewelry Shaders

No Count

Kahhl Chest (can't find it anymore)
AtmoQube

ckloetstra said:

I Just bought Headshop pro but the morph to edit the facial dots is not working It allows the had to select but nothing moves the square stays in place and nothing happens to target in right window ?

The autodots need to turn red in the left (photo) window in order to move/shape dots in the right (3D) window. Maybe the screen resolution of your monitor needs to be changed...

Tip: Use the "0" on the nav cross to auto-align 3D head to the direction of the the photo.

Ghosty12 said:

I often wondered about that, just looking over at Rendo and it is quite interesting to see what the differences are.. Seems that Victoria 4 is still very popular, where as Genesis and Genesis 2 not so much.. As for myself yes I still play around a lot with Genesis 2 and Genesis 3, as converting characters is not so painful as it is converting to Genesis 8.. Also that Generation X2 unfortunately only goes as far as Genesis 3..

...Generation X2 was also one of the reasons I stopped with G3. as it really expands the "gene pool" nicely. There is a utility to transfer morphs between G3 and G8 but it is more limited.

Torquinox said:

V4/M4 lasted a long time in the market compared to G and G2. Did someone already mention that? V4 works quite well with Poser, too. They like Poser at Rendo. There is still a lot of older content here, there, and other places - Content for older figures, newer content for older figures, etc. I picked up some stuff I didn't even know existed. O_o

...Gen4 through G3 also work with Carrara.. 

Richard Haseltine said:

Morphs alone cannot move the textures, they can stretch them out though. If you are seeing a break, make sure it isn't soemthign like having two figures and the morph is allowing the other to poke-through at that point

Morph indeed doesn't fix it, but applying material that came with the package breaks it. I have found out that changing base bump fixes most of it (legs has 1, torso 2), but there is still line between both materials in the same place. Changing values randomly is not exactly best way to debug it.

You're welcome, thanks for the feedback :-)

....................................

Now, for those who have finished combing over all the sale pages here, there's another place where a character a number of people here were wanting as a morph, is on sale 1/2 price. Now this is NOT a morph, but it is made for 3D printing, etc., the .obj loads fine in D/S so with some TLC I'm sure people can figure out how to use it in the their scenes.

Harrison Ford, same package has with and without hat. Includes ZBrush file for those that want to work with it in that program.

The same artist has character busts for quite a few famous characters, from Batman, Game of Thrones, some pirates, some folk who play with witchcraft, Star Wars ... but NO Star Trek {whew, that sure saved me some money}. btw - any bust .obj imported into D/S, then possibly with one of the nifty marble shader presets you have, can then be selected and saved to your content folders as a prop. Easy, peasy.

Squishy, I'm not talking about making a morph of the entire hair, I'm talking about the 'helper morphs' that DAZ Studio is apparently writing into the save file every single time I save a file with this G3 hair in question. 

Don't foget that morphs are linear - if you try to morph the legs closed they will change length as they move rather than describing an arc.

I Just bought Headshop pro but the morph to edit the facial dots is not working It allows the had to select but nothing moves the square stays in place and nothing happens to target in right window ?

Morphs alone cannot move the textures, they can stretch them out though. If you are seeing a break, make sure it isn't soemthign like having two figures and the morph is allowing the other to poke-through at that point

4.20.1.38 (May 20, 2022)

• NVIDIA Iray
  • Integrated Iray 2021.1.3 (3349500.9894); see this thread for more detail
    • REQUIRES: (no change since Daz Studio 4.16.1.34)
      • NVIDIA Driver 465.89 (or newer) on Windows for CPU-only rendering
      • NVIDIA Driver 471.41 (or newer) on Windows for GPU rendering
      • NVIDIA Driver 510.XX (or newer) instead of 496.XX (or newer)
        • See Known Issues and Restrictions
      • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
        • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
• Properties
  • Fixed an overzealous reset behavior
    • [Alt] + click, or option menu > Reset, on a property would cause more of its attribute values to change than it should have. This resulted in those changes becoming embedded in saved scenes, which created a dependence on the property that was "reset" - the property became a requirement instead of the natural expectation of not being used, and therefore not being a dependency.
• Morph Loader Pro
  • Improved feedback/logging when an attempt to apply the reverse deformations pose for a given morph fails
• Scripting API
  • Made additions in various areas; see the Change Log for more detail
• Fixed bugs and/or made improvements in various areas; see the Change Log for details

When you convert a hair onto another figure, it creates an entirely new asset, it isn't super obvious and you might think it's just a morph or something but it has to have a whole new skeleton and weighting, so yes that must be saved either into the scene file or as a separate support asset. Trying to treat something like this as a morph of the original asset wouldn't make load times shorter because this process doesn't create new geometry or weighting (unless the original asset used parametric weighting, but I don't think that's common any more since the advent of weight mapping).

I'm applying premade morph that changes shape and materials on legs and feet of a character, and while it works more or less as it should, there is one issue - there is extremely visible line around thighs where new and old textures meet. I have no idea how and if this issue can be fixed.

Morph in question is NecDaz91 morph pack, and this is how issue looks like.