Is there any way to put morphs into folders in the Parameters tab?
sriesch
Posts: 4,241
Is there any way in Studio 4.x to put morphs into "folders" in the Parameters tab?
the list of morphs (for V3 including various additional products for example) is huge and kind of unmanageable when I'm trying to find things. I know I can search for morphs which is great if I can remember part of the name, but that doesn't always work. It would be nice if I could just create folders called eyes, nose, smile, etc. for example.
I can fit more parameters on the screen at once using the Darkside style, that helps a little too.
A long time ago I had Parameters Organizer, but I couldn't get it to work, and it looks like it's only for Studio 3.x. anyway I think.
Comments
Hi Sean,
There are a couple ways I know of. If you have Poser, this functionality is standard. Just load the figure and drag and drop. I don't have Poser open ATM but creating a new folder is pretty easy to figure out. IIRC there's a drop down on the top right of the parameters menu, but don't hold me to that. Make your changes, then save the figure.
The only way I know of to do what you want in DAZ Studio is with the Property Editor, which is part of the Content Creation Toolkit if I recall correctly.
I am using DAZ Studio. I can see the Property Editor tab, but have no idea how to use it. Can't wait for the manual to be finished. Suggestions, or links to tutorials?
This thread may have some of the info you are looking for?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3349/
A long while ago D3D did a couple of Pose files for the Gen 3's, these grouped the morph dials in the Body & Head.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=26830
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=31148
Rather than using the Property Editor just use these instead, load V3 into a scene, apply the V3 pose file to her and then export a new CR2, and use that to load V3 from now on.
As for the Property Editor, the left column shows the groups and dials available for the selected actor (body part), select the dial(s) you want to group, right click the selected one to bring up the menu, mouse over "Grouping" to expand it, if there is a group in the supplied list that suits you then click on it to add the dial(s) to it, other wise click on "create.." to make a new group, ie in the case of the PBMDC_XX dials I'd add them to something like "Morphs/Legacy/DAZ", the / creates a subgroup.
Once you've finished grouping them you need to save it, for that your best bet is to go "File>Export" and save it as a new CR2.
You can use the property editor to create groups or look at Dimension3Ds DSF Tools (that's sold here at DAZ) to group your morphs. However, I suggest you don't do it; adding more folders and groups to the parameters slows saving, loading of morphs and Property editor is extremely slow to load.
Only if your saving in DS native formats (.DAZ or .DUF) as your having to replace thousands of files with each save. As for it being slow to load, on my almost 4 year old core2 quad I can be editing a Gen3 in it in under 1 second, like the save the more files you have to deal with the longer things take, take my converted Aiko3, because she has ghost dials that are ERC'd 6 ways from sunday I can make a brew and still be back before she's loaded into the PE, with a converted V4 you'd think DS had froze as she has twice as many files as A3.
Only if your saving in DS native formats (.DAZ or .DUF) as your having to replace thousands of files with each save. As for it being slow to load, on my almost 4 year old core2 quad I can be editing a Gen3 in it in under 1 second, like the save the more files you have to deal with the longer things take, take my converted Aiko3, because she has ghost dials that are ERC'd 6 ways from sunday I can make a brew and still be back before she's loaded into the PE, with a converted V4 you'd think DS had froze as she has twice as many files as A3.
Incorrect.
As a person that has A LOT of morphs that are categorized for my workflow including items transferred through GenX, changing categories when loading morphs via Morph Loader Pro takes 30-60 seconds to load... not to mention not all your categories will be available in the list. Loading the Property Editor with all those categories takes around 10 minutes.... and this is on a quad core processor. So if I need to ERC freeze a morph... I turn click the button and go watch some TV or fix something to drink... it's that slow.
The less categories you have, the better.
Remember that you can get to a pane's option menu by right-clicking on its tab, even if it isn't visible (if it's docked with other panes, so that the tab is visible but the body of the pane isn't).
Remember that you can get to a pane's option menu by right-clicking on its tab, even if it isn't visible (if it's docked with other panes, so that the tab is visible but the body of the pane isn't).
That's not what I'm talkling about. The time to load all of genesis' information and group it into the property editor takes a really long time. If you have a lot of groups defined, selecting a new group from the morph loader Pro window doesn't display all of them; if it's more that can be displayed on the screen, you won't see it.. you have to select the "create" option then manually select it; there's a scrollable selection there.
That's not what I'm talkling about. The time to load all of genesis' information and group it into the property editor takes a really long time. If you have a lot of groups defined, selecting a new group from the morph loader Pro window doesn't display all of them; if it's more that can be displayed on the screen, you won't see it.. you have to select the "create" option then manually select it; there's a scrollable selection there.
Ah, I thought you were complaining about the time taken to do an ERC freeze, for which you need the Property Editor contest menu but not the editor itself. If the editor is docked behind another pane you can avoid having to display it, and so having to wait for the pane to refesh its lists. But of course that's no help if you do need to get at the pane itself.
ROFLMFAO, That is exactly what I was talking about earlier, your problem is too many morph files sitting in your data folder.
With a Poser Figure your loading one large CR2 (unless your using Gen4) with all of the channel info built in, all of which is stored in RAM, so when you open the PE it's all there almost instantly.
Genesis is totally different, you have a small loader script which causes DS to have to load/reference anywhere upto a couple of thousand files, which is why it can be slow to load in, but only the mesh and rig is loaded into RAM as most of the channel info was ignored, just enough of it was read to create "placeholder" dials. So when you open the PE with any Tri-ax figure there is nothing there for it to use, it has to go and read/load all of those bloody files before it can give you anything to work with, which is why it can take several minutes and why DS can look like it's hung on you.
It's a crap system which is just an evolution of another crap system we've used for years.
Personally I just edit the morph files directly.
I copied the M4 Creature Creator Morphs via GenX last night.
If I go into the Genesis data structure now they're in data/DAZ 3D/genesis/base/morphs/D3D Gen X/Michael 4
First thing I do is move them to data/DAZ 3D/genesis/base/morphs/D3D Gen X/M4CC Head or M4CC Body - that reflects the divisions that existed in the M4 versions, but I can go further, and have sub-folders for M4CC FHM, M4CC Mouth, whatever I want.
If I load up a Genesis now it will still work exactly as before, the actual folder structure is overridden by the divisions stated within the .dsfs
I can go further and move everything from /D3D Gen X to a new /M4 folder. Load another new Genesis and the morphs are still displayed as before
Just this part of the process is useful for categorising the morph files to get at them later, but if we now open up the individual morph files, down near the bottom of the first page of text will be something like (this is from one of the FHMs):
"region" : "Head",
"group" : "/Generation X/Michael 4/Morphs | Shapes/CreatureCreator/Full Head",
I can quite happily alter that to
"region" : "",
"group" : "/M4/M4CC/FHM",
Save that and load up Genesis, and now there is an M4 folder at the same level as Actor in the parameters tab, with /M4CC/FHM under it.
There seems to be some complexity with the 'region' entry, leave it as "Head" and the files appear in "Actor/Head" rather than "Head" alone, but the customisability to lay out the morphs exactly as desired is there.
I haven't confirmed whether or not there is any issue with using this modded structure and, say, a dialed character morph, but it's certainly applicable to morph packs that aren't used by other products, and potentially to all morphs.