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Naming convention for saving morphs ?

cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433
edited July 2022 in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Is there a documention about the naming convention for saving morphs as assets?

E.g.:

I can save morphs with any name I like and they work. But in the splattered information bits about DS there is often written about mcm (morph controlled morph), jcm (joint controlled morph) etc and noted that the name should include those. Does DS need this or is it just for us humans to know what the intention of the morph is?

Edit:

I just read that a combined morph needs to be named CTRL at the beginning but again no mentioning if this is a technical requiredment of DS or just for us humans.

And I found a mentioning of PHM as "part head morph"- what about this?

Post edited by cgidesign on

Comments

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 11,151
    edited July 2022

    JCM, CTRL, PHM. These are all saved in particular ways and named with the prefix to properly identify. WP Guru has videos. Found this one on JCMs.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4bpd_xgjWU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NppHW7AmFQ&t=19s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ1TOAqIzeU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_iMg2A01cI

    Post edited by Cris Palomino on
  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433

    Thanks a lot.

    Will watch them.

  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433

    Note to WP Guru:

    Thanks a lot for creating those free information gems (I would pay for commercial ones).

    But may I kindly aks to not use background music? It is distracting to hear the sharp sound of a piano playing while I listen to your explanation.

  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433

    Cris Palomino said:

    JCM, CTRL, PHM. These are all saved in particular ways and named with the prefix to properly identify. WP Guru has videos. Found this one on JCMs.

    Ok, I watched them but there is no information about naming conventions. Are there other ressources about this topic somewhere?

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 11,151

    cgidesign said:

    Cris Palomino said:

    JCM, CTRL, PHM. These are all saved in particular ways and named with the prefix to properly identify. WP Guru has videos. Found this one on JCMs.

    Ok, I watched them but there is no information about naming conventions. Are there other ressources about this topic somewhere?

    These docs may help.  http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/assembling/tutorials/start

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,838

    Sadly there is no hard and fast rule about naming, which is one of the reasons I get in trouble around here, as far as my friends are concerned I'm Customer Support, so I probably see and fix more Duplicate Formula issues than DAZ CS does.

    The naming is partially software coder minds at work and partially to help stupid humans identify what the file is for.

  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433
    edited July 2022

    Cris Palomino said:

    These docs may help.  http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/assembling/tutorials/start

    Thanks but still only partly helpful.

    What I got so far:

    General naming convention:

    TypeOfMorph | Vendor | Figure | Part of Figure | Left/Right if applicaple | Descriptive Name

    E.g.:

    JCMcgidesignG81FShldRMakeBetterBend

    Question:

    Is it allowed to use underscores if one intends to sell products in the DAZ shop? E.g.:

    JCM_cgidesign_G81F_Shld_R_MakeBetterBend

     

    What I understood so far:

    Morph Type Description
    JCM morph triggered by a joint value change

     

    But what about:

    Morph Type Description
    MCM morph triggered by another morph ?
    PHM ?
    CTRL ?
    ? what else ?
    Post edited by cgidesign on
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,838

    Many of the names came over from Poser, and due to how every Poser figure worked every morph was a Partial Head/Body Morph, Full Head/Body Morphs were normally Master dials in the Body.

    In DS4 things are a little different, we are working with a single mesh rather than a collection of props, so technically every morphs works on the entire mesh, but we still use the old naming system for the basics.

    PHM - Partial Head Morph - a morph that works on a small part of the head, something like a nose or lip morph
    PBM - Partial Body Morph - a morph that works on a small part of the body, somthing like a navel morph or a calf morph
    FHM - Full Head Morph - usually a character morph that reshaped most of the head
    FBM - Full Body Morph - any morph that changes most of the body, like a custom sculpt for a character

    That's the standard morphs, now for the not so standard

    MCM - basically used for corrective morphs for the body, an example is you dial up a breast morph while you have a character dialed in, breast morph look horrible, so you need a corrective morph so the shape looks better when that character is used.

    eJCM - another corrective morph, this time for expressions.

    JCM - Joint Controlled Morph, used to help the mesh "pose" better, normally works on the base shape, but can be set to only work with a specific morph.

    CTRL - a Control asset, a dial that uses Formula (ERC links) to control two or more assets, which can be morphs or bones or both.

    There are other variations but this post could end up as a novel if I go through them all.

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,022

    MCM is for "Morph Controlled Morph". It's a corrective morph triggered by using another morph, just like a JCM is a corrective morph triggered by joint movement.

  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433
    edited July 2022

    Thanks a lot to all and especially Bejaymac for writing down the list.

    Do you maybe have any info about the underscore question as well?

    Is it allowed to use underscores if one intends to sell products in the DAZ shop?

    JCMcgidesignG81FShldRMakeBetterBend    is nearly undreadable

    JCM_cgidesign_G81F_Shld_R_MakeBetterBend    is better than without underscores

    Post edited by cgidesign on
  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,838

    First off I'm not a vendor, I'm an old school user who makes his own content.

    However I've fixed enough content sold here, to know that DAZ and a couple of vendors do use underscores in their morph names.

    So I don't see any problem with you using them.

  • cgidesigncgidesign Posts: 433

    Thanks Bejaymac.

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 2,887

    Are you sure about the CTRL prefix being required?

    Looking at the DSON for such a morph, one sees that a CTRL morph is just a morph with more than one output formula, both of which just refer to another morph's current value.

    That is, they're just morphs like any other; they just need to be evaluate in a certain order. But all of that information is in the file itself, so I don't know why it would need a special prefixx.

    By the way, I suggest that you simply crack open a few morph files and look at the DSON inside. I think things will become clearer when you can explicitly see:

    A morph whose formula depends on another morph is an MCM

    A morph whose formula depends on a bone's rotation is a JCM

    A  morph with more than one formula has been ERC frozen

    A morph whose vertex count is less than the full vertex count is a partial

    etc...

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,838

    As I've already stated there is no hard and fast rule on naming, so you can call them anything you want.

    But as someone who spends far to much of my own time up to my armpits in other peoples DSF files, sticking to the DAZ naming system makes life a bit easier for those like myself, who regularly fix other peoples "mistakes".

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