How can I Save and then Reload multiple figures without getting Crosstalk type problems?
Harry Ominous
Posts: 58
here's the problem reduced to its simplest form (after MUCH cussing and swearing trying to work out why my characters kept losing their morphs half way through a project). the problem affects any combination of multiple characters - i.e. M4s, V4s, and for all i know, M3s and V3s too. anyway, this sequence of actions reproduces it every time:
1) load a v4 with ++ morphs
2) morph her to, say, an Amazon
3) save her as "V4A" (either Save As, or just by dragging her into "Objects")
4) in a new session load v4 with ++ morphs
5) morph her to, say, a Pearshape
6) save her as "V4B"
7) close everything down and restart a new document
8) load "V4A". check that she's still an Amazon. she is? great
9) now check her chest morphs. they should all be there and working. they are? good, now:
10) in the SAME document load "V4B". check that she's still a Pearshape. she is? great, now:
11) click on her chest. you may get that amusingly unhelpful message "an error has occurred", or if that doesn't happen then her chest morphs will all be showing 0.0s, all the sliders will be over on the right, and they'll all be unusable (although it's still possible to adjust V4A's chest morphs)
the crosstalk-ish problem doesn't just affect the chest area either. click on the abdomen and you get the same phenomenon
now, if you open a new session and create two v4++ figures from scratch in the same document, and play around with their morphs without saving and reloading them, then you don't get the same problem. both work independently and can be adjusted separatedly. but of course that's not much use if you want to save and reuse characters
sooooo, i can't believe i'm the first person to have suffered with this. has anyone got any advice on a workflow that would solve the problem while letting me save characters in Carrara and reuse them again later?
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Comments
This looks very much like a very common problem with a somewhat annoying workaround.
When you installed V4 and M4 (also K4), did you run DAZ Studio (3, 4, 4.5 doesn't seem to matter) to create the ExP files, or did you run the batch files (DzCreateExpFiles) directly from your runtime?
I have never been able to figure out exactly why, but the ONLY way to get morphs to work properly and reliably in Carrara is to load V4/M4/K4 into DAZ Studio and use the PowerLoader to initialize them.
NOTE --> You only have to do this once for each morph package, not every time you want to use V4/M4/K4. Once you load them all up, they will all get initialized and will work from there on out unless you buy a new set.
If you ran the batch files after loading in Studio, you'll have to go back and use the PowerLoader again. The results of running the batch files DO NOT WORK for Carrara.
Old threads discussing the issue:
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=167852&highlight=powerloader
http://forumarchive.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=170613&highlight=powerloader
thanks for the fast reply
i haven't been able to get it to work yet, but at least i know that other people have hit the same problem and found a solution, so, i'll just keep on trying. i'm probably doing something out of sequence, or something (i've never used the powerloaders before, they always seemed like a typical piece of daz overengineering for no good purpose)
So Fenric, is this Power Loader the same as when I installed V4 and it wanted me to initialize V4 immediately after installation?
Edited to ask if renaming Model under the figure's hierarchy to something like Model1 or Amazon will help?
in Daz studio under the Poser content directories, figures, Daz people when you load V4 or M4 there is a powerloader icon of each character.
you use that one and have all the morphs ticked.
No. The "do you want to run the initializer now" question at the end of installation runs the batch files, and is of very little use for Carrara.
1. The PowerLoader is a separate installer EXE that you must install in addition to each morph package.
2. As Wendy said, you must open DAZ Studio and load V4. If you picked the right file to load, you will get a dialog box where you can check or uncheck the morph packages that you want to load.
Just in case it's not clear:
You have to use DAZ Studio to get functional morphs for V4, M4, and K4 for use in Carrara. If you don't have DAZ Studio, you will have to go get it and install it - that is the only thing we have found that works.
I use C7 Pro on a PPC G5 Mac.
I only have D/S 1.x something and I rarely open it (try annually). I have no problems loading the morphs++ from the Content Browser within Carrara. I have multiple characters saved to my Object Browser that use morphs++ and also some freebie custom morph packages which I've never loaded into D/S in any shape whatsoever. In fact, I'm not sure I've even loaded V4 with morphs++ in D/S. I just did a test and loaded three V4s each with different morphs into a single scene and I had no problem further customizing them using morphs++ functions such as Amazon, etc. All morphs seemed to work whether it was shape morphs or movement morphs. Is this a PC thing or does it effect Mac users as well? Is it a C8.x bug?
C8 is far worse about it than C7 was, but A4 still had issues even in C7. I don't know about C7 mac, but C8 mac is one of the platforms that I tested for this problem last year. (I did link to the old threads, EP ;) )
In my experience, it does matter which morph packages are installed - the more you have, the worse it gets. It also does matter which ones you actually load (regardless of whether you use them or not)
i guess i'm just bug-happy, because this sounds like a good case for filing a bug report.
Yeah, but I only skimmed and the "old" Threads could be "old" from July. :-P
I usually load the whole works because I don't know sometimes what I want to adjust.
I think we did... but it had to go against DAZ Studio, and the whole Genesis thing started shortly after.
I guess its a matter of perspective, but that seems like a Carrara issue -- as a separate product it shouldn't require DS be installed and used for it to function properly. I suppose that is why, even though V4 and M4 are bundled with Carrara, that Carrara was never listed as supported. I wonder if they are going to continue in that tradition with genesis.
i'm still having problems i'm afraid. if you've got a spare moment could you (or one of the other experts here) please look through the sequence of actions i'm performing and indicate where i might be going wrong?
i've tried the same sequence as outlned below with v4 without luck, so i've just now tried resetting and redownloading m4 to try it with him. i then performed the following steps:
1) installed him to my Poser directory. although i would normally then move him to a better place i've left him in the default "Figures/DAZ People" and "Poses/DAZ's Michael 4"
2) i didn't let the installation complete (i.e. i deselected the bit at the end). i didn't run the desktop icon either
3) i then installed the morphs++ package, and finally the powerloader installers for the Base and the ++ packages
4) i opened DS4, and loaded him. the powerloader runs ok. i then closed DS down without saving anything
5) i opened Carrara, loaded him. installed the ++ morphs manually from the Pose directoty, set him to Superhero, then saved him to Objects as M4A
6) in another document i again loaded him, installed the++ morphs manually, set him to Heavy, then saved him to Objects as M4B
7) i restarted Carrara, loaded M4A and M4B together (they loaded ok). changing any of the chest morphs on M4A worked fine. trying to change them on M4B did not work (it just inflates or deflates his head. possibly because "HeadSize" is the very first parameter in "Morphforms/Morphs++)
(steps 5 to 7 are pretty much the same as what happened with V4 in my initial post)
(i should add that i've also tried, as a separate exercise, letting the installation complete at step 2 rather than terminating it prematurely, and also tried manually running, and not running, the DzCreateExPFiles in the !DAZ runtime/libraries folder. none of these has seemed to make the slightest difference to the problem for me)
(i've also tried naming the two figures' model parameters to "Model1" and "Model2", as per an earlier suggestion, but that didn't work either)
(i've also tried setting up, and installing to, a completely new Carrara-specific runtime, and going through all the above motions. with the same drearily predictable result)
i'd still be grateful if some knowledgeable person could go through the post above and try and identify the area where i'm going wrong. i've also raised an error report, not in the hope that it will get fixed (i haven't ever had any luck with my carrara bug reporting in the past), but just because the error is so blooming IRKSOME
anyhoo, that aside, i've found a partial fix. it's not great, but it gives me a workflow where i can use multiple figures in a scene without screwing up the morphs (fingers crossed. i've only got it working on small test scenes, not a proper project yet)
the solution came by trying out something i was pretty sure wasn't going to work, because there seemed no reason why the attempt would work when nothing else did
what i did was:
> load v4. apply the ++morphs. add some full body/face morphs to her
> load m4 into the same scene. apply the ++morphs. add some full body/face morphs to him
> save the scene with both figures in it
> reload the scene. now, i expected that i'd still find that one figure's morphs were ok, and the other figure's morphs weren't, as in my original problem, but what actually happened was that both sets of morphs still worked in the reloaded scene, independently
ok, not ideal, because obviously i want to store different characters separately and use them on a mix-and-match basis, but, as a temporary solution i can design the figures in DS (as i had been doing anyway, before deciding to move from DS back over to Carrara for my animation work). export them as CR2 files. then load THOSE into Carrara
as i say, not ideal, because you can't export more than a single figure from DS (i.e. you can't clothe the figure and export the clothed figure), and the eyelash textures aren't properly exported. but those problems aren't insurmountable
sooooo... onward and upward....
Ok, I'm not sure what's going on, because following your steps works perfectly fine for me.
Exactly which version of Carrara are you on? The most current release is 8.1.1.12
M4 Morphs++ was updated last year, are you sure that you have the most recent version?
I've always created my Characters in Poser and saved them to my poser runtime as a CR2 in a special 'My Characters' folder, then loaded them into Carrara t via the usual runtime Library route.
I've never encountered any problems with cross talk or Morphs not working properly, using this method.
Not sure if that helps as a possible work around.
S.K.
i have 8.1. pro build 153 (64bit) installed. when i first started getting the problems i reset, and re-downloaded, the latest versions of v4 and m4 (although not, until now, the latest version of carrara)
i'm currently, as we speak, downloading the latest version of carrara (8.5.0132). it's not possible, as far as i can see, to specify that you want to download version 8.1.1.12, or indeed any particular version. but perhaps this version i'm currently downloading will solve the problem? (ha ha. only kidding. we'll see)
p.s. i've been doing this s**t since the days of poser FOUR. it's not surprising that n00bs (some of whom come onto my site saying "how on earth do i get any of this stuff actually WORKING?)", just give up and go home. some days i know precisely how they feel
*sigh* DAZ's new storefront leaves a great deal to be desired.
8.0.1.153 is quite an old version, and it had quite a large number of serious bugs. You might need to put in a support ticket to get access to the last non-beta.
And you are quite right - these sorts of things are unreasonably frustrating. The good news is that it is very specific to the "Gen 4" characters - it is the fancy multi-level injection system that DAZ tried with those figures, and it causes a lot of trouble. The only consolation (and it's cold comfort, to be sure) is that Poser and Studio folks have their fair share of trouble with them, too.
I hardly use gen 4 figures. I use A3/H3 mostly, and Melody/Micah which are based on them. Lots of V3RR and M3RR, too. V4/M4 only very rarely.
This has been and will continue to be my advice for V4/M4 characters: load them from CR2 if at all possible - not from the browser.
my bad. i was a bit doodled last night, and downloaded the first carrara installer i came across. this morning i've looked again, and i can see that v8.1.1.12 is also in there. soooo, can't blame the new store (THIS time, anyway)
i'm downloading that now, and we'll see if it solves the problem
thanks once again for the help and advice
*jumps up and down excitedly*
looks like the issue was fixed in the latest stable release
i've just installed it, saved and then reloaded two gen4 figures with different morphs, and... i'm now able to adjust them independently
that's made my day
AGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
it was all working fine yesterday. so i closed the bug report, and went to bed happy
but. today. well, today. it... isn't
it's back to what it was doing before. load two saved characters, and the second one loses all their morphs
i give up
HI hieronymous :)
Have you installed the Powerloaders for V4 / M4 etc, into Daz Studio and ran those by loading the figures.
Doing that seems to do something mysterious which makes those figures work correctly in Carrara, and allows multiple figures without issues.
:)
hi
yeah, i installed the powerloaders a while back, at the same time as i did a fresh download and install of v4 & m4, in the hope that it might cure the problem
the really frustrating thing is that when i downloaded the latest (non-beta) release of carrara, everything seemed to be working properly. then blow me down, the very next day, it had gone back to... not working properly again
i should add that i've always been able to get multiple figures to work together, but only when i load them directly as cr2s. what i can't seem to do is to reload figures that i've saved in carrara, and then get those working together
(just done a quick test, and the problem doesn't seem to effect the gen3 figures)