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I was just asking in general but I understand I do not want to step on Dracorns toes either I can wait patiently!
Okay, then. Thank you.
To answer your question, Saph, yes you can make your own sliders right in DAZ Studio once you have completed your morph. The way to do this can vary depending firstly on the figure that you are using. The procedure is different depending on whether you are using a Poser format figure, or a DAZ Studio format figure. All the Genesis series figures, Genesis through Genesis 8, are DAZ Studio format figures and I'll assume that you are interested in working with morphs for one of those. I'll use one of my G3F characters as an example. You may wish to refer to the following article in the Documentation Centre for additional details/more confusion:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/packaging/tutorials/saving_morphs/start
Figure one (refer to the first thumbnail below the post - I'll not embed all the images to avoid filling up the thread) shows a base Genesis 8 Female with a custom "dialed" morph that I made applied. We'll call her "Kerry". Why not.
Step 1.
The first step in creating a morph slider is to create a new property in the heirarchy for the figure for it.
With G3F selected in the scene and my custom morph Kerry applied, open the Parameters tab.
Now right-click anywhere on the left-hand column of the Parameter display to open a pop-up dialogue and select "Edit Mode" at the top, then "Create new Property" at the bottom. That will open a new popup window.
Enter a Label and a Name (you can use the same for both), and click the drop down arrow on the right of Path: and select Actor/Full Body. (You can choose anything that you prefer here, but that will do for starters until you come up with a preference). That is where your new morph slider will be found under the Parameters tab once your new slider has been created.
Now under Presentation Attributes, click the little arrow and select Modifier/Shape.
Optionally, at this point, you can select colours for your morph slider if you wish, although they can be left as-is and edited later. You can also specify an icon to use, but again this can be added later if desired.
Under Float Attributes you should set the Min value to 0.
You can also leave your slider set to use percentages if you wish, or change it to no if you do not (I prefer the latter).
Click "Create"
Step 2.
Under the Parameters tab find your new property by going to Actor > Full Body (or do a search). In my case the new property is called Kerry Head, as shown.
Right-click on the new property and click on ERC Freeze in the resulting popup. (down near the bottom)
That will open a new window - just click accept.
You can now test your new morph slider to ensure that it works as expected.
Step 3.
With your figure selected in the scene choose File > Save As > Support Asset > Morph Asset(s) from the DAZ Studio menu bar.
In the resulting Popup window, you can leave the Asset Directory alone, but enter your name under Vendor Name, and the name of your morph below that (Kerry Head in my case).
Under the Properties list, expand the list until you fine the property that you created earlier (Kerry Head once again in my case), and select it.
Hit accept and you're done.
Exit Edit Mode under the Parameters tab (Right-click for the context menu as before and uncheck Edit Mode).
As a final test, you can load a new base figure in DAZ Studio, find the slider and dial-in your character.
Simple, init?
Of couse, if you want to distribute and package or separate head and body morph sliders, those are a whole other thing. (the character I was using was actually both head and body morphs despite my naming convention).
Here is me playing around with V4 morphs and creature creator for V4
Thanks so much for answering my question @SixDs, I will read it though tomorrow as I need some sleep now been such a long day for me.
Just a couple of additional notes regarding the creation of the morph sliders as I described. As I mentioned, many of the properties entered when you create your slider (Step 1 in my post) can be edited anytime you wish afterwards. For example, in the case of mine, I probably shouldn't have named it Head when it was actually full body. I may have better chosen to also put it in a different category. Additionally, as stated, I can add custom colours to the slider to more easily differentiate my own morphs and an icon if I wish. If anyone has created a slider and wishes to know how to edit the properties, that is a fairly easy task to both explain and do. Say the word.
I tend not to create morph sliders for all my characters. While it certainly can be convenient when I decide to use them, there is a downside of sorts, that may be relatively specific to my own circumstances. I have a lot of morphs. Looking at Genesis 3 Female for example, I have, of course, the base morphs that come with the figure, which includes both adjustment morphs and poses. I then have a number of the DAZ3D base characters for G3F, such as Victoria 7, Aiko 7, The Girl 7, etc., and each of those come with morphs and poses. Then there are a significant number of PA characters and freebies, that add their own head, body and full sliders to the mix. Then I have a number of clones for earlier figures. On top of all that, there are the add-on morph packages for G3F that I have, such as the DAZ3D Head and Body Morph packages, the 200 Plus - Head & Face Morphs for Genesis 3 Female(s) and a number of other packages. All of this means that a lot (hundreds) of sliders get loaded every time I load a copy of G3F. Wading through them all can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, and so that is why I tend not to create additional sliders for all my own characters as well. Things are a little crowded in there already and there are other ways that I can save and access my custom characters if needed.
Finally, the Shaping tab. Old habits die hard and I've grown accustomed to working in the Parameters tab. However, there is a downside to the Parameters tab that relates in part to the foreging point. The Parameters tab, with the root node selected shows all the parameters, represented by sliders, for that figure, including both shaping morphs and poses. The Shaping tab, on the other hand, displays only the shaping morphs and not poses. This not only reduces the number of sliders, but also avoids inadvertently using a posing slider to modify your character instead of a shaping slider. It will work, but can cause potential unexpected results when posing your character later. I should admit that there are times when some of those pose controls look like exactly what I want to achieve, and yes, I do tend to use them anyways.
Okay, this thread needs a new post, methinks. Here's a dial-spun morph for y'all. Guess who? (no, not a real person, I mean the figure!).
Let me see with those cheek bones I would guess V4?
Here is yet another GF2 Base Character!
Meet Tawny a half elven beach fairy!
"I would guess V4?"
Oooh, swing and a miss, Saph. I must confess that, if the tables were turned, that might be my first guess, as well. But no, not Victoria 4. It is actually Aiko 3, believe it or not.
Shouldn't a beach fairy have water wings?
Dial spinning can become addictive, can it not?
Aiko 3, seriously!?
I'm impressed!
Wow ! thanks for sharing, definetly a technique I'd like to learn.
Well, dive in, AJ!
Its one of the things that you can do and with which you can have a lot of fun regardless of the power of your PC. As long as you can run DAZ Studio, you're good to go. And you don't need Iray, or Dforce to spin dials.. As a matter of fact, that A3 character was created some time ago using the same PC I'm using right now to type this - an ancient Core 2 Quad with 8 Gb of RAM, and an equally ancient Radeon video card with a whole 512 Mb of VRAM. Why? Well I try to keep the newer ones off the internet to minimize housekeeping and so this one gets used for almost all internet access. It is sometimes simply more convenient to play in DAZ Studio on it. The render that I posted, BTW, was done in 3Delight, not Iray. So again, you don't need a powerhouse to play. And just to be clear, I have multiple figures that I routinely play with on this machine, all the way up to and including Genesis 8.
So practice, practice, practice and drop by and let us know how you are doing, or if you have questions.
Yes most definately drop by and show us how you are making out with dailing up new characters!!
Yes it has become an obcession I think!!!
She is way too young to have her waer wings yet remember they need to earn their wings!!
I would not have belived that if you not told me that it was Aiko 3!!
Surfaces - 3Delight
Let's talk about surfaces now, and I'll start with 3Delight. There is so much you can do with character surfaces settings, and you can apply the same principals to any 3Delight surface.
If you don't already have Age of Armor's Subsurface Shader Base - here's the link (it's free): https://www.daz3d.com/subsurface-shader-base
Starting with Adrienne for G2F base character, 3Delight.
Skin Changers:
This is the easy part. You can load the skins interchangeably within the generation.
Genesis - Can use V4/M4 skins and Genesis skins.
Genesis 2 - This one is standalone. You can't load G1 skins without converting them.
Genesis 3 - You can't load G2 skins without converting them. You can load G8 skins with a utility, and G3F and G3M also with a utility.
Genesis 8 - You can load G3 skins, but the eye textures don't always work because the eye surfaces of G8 have changed. To avoid the contact lens rim, just use G8 eyes.
Base Texture:
With skin from Kyra for Lilith 6
Playing with G2 (Concepts are the same with all 3DL characters):
With G2F selected, open up the Surfaces tab and expand the Surfaces twistie. I'm not worried about Legacy Surfaces at this time. Click on Face. That's where I like to start.
Here's a basic explanation of 3Delight Surfaces. You can use these same principals on anything.
Diffuse Color: This is where your basic map will go.
Opacity Strength: Use to cut back on opacity to make something transparent or invisible.
Bump: This is what gives the surface some texture, like the pores on skin. Bump Strength is where the bump map will be located. Bump Minimum and Maximum show how high and low the distortion of the mesh will go. For other surfaces, increase Bump Strength and the min/max to add more roughness to the texture.
Displacement. This is where texture can really come in. On Adrienne, there is an additional map in Displacement strength to give some hight to the moles. On other surfaces, use the Specularity map here or a special displacement map. High values in Displacement Strength and min/max can produce some extrordinary results.
Specular: This creates the highlights on the surface. The Specular map controls how the highlights work across the surface. The lighter areas produce more highlights. The map goes in Specular color. The color here is the color of your highlights.
Glossiness: This adds additional highlights. But the numbers are reversed, i.e., the higher the value, the less glossy. 100% is matte.
Specular 2 Color. Some characters come with this additional surface to add to the SSS feature of 3Delight. There will also be a specular map here. This adds a second layer of sheen to skin and also the highlights on lips.
Ambient Color. This is set to black unless you want something to glow. For example, if you want eyes to glow, then set Ambient Color to something pale and turn up Ambient Strength. You don't need much, just 5-10% on the iris.
Velvet Color. This fakes the highlight of fine hair on this skin. Make it slightly ligher to the skin tone, or slightly blue if the skin is too orange. Velvet Falloff controls the sharpness, so 12.00 to 15.00 makes it nice and soft. Velvet Strength set too high gives characters too much velvety look so be careful with the settings.
Subsurface Color. Some characters will have this - it's part of SSS.
Roughness: When a surface has an additional roughness setting, this breaks up the glossy effect.
PLAYING AROUND WITH THE SETTINGS:
You can create pretty much any skin tone yourself, including fantasy colors. The key is to start with light skin as you can go darker, but you can't go lighter.
Darker Skin: The simple way is to darken Diffuse Color. Here's a value of 125 108 90 on face, lips and ears.
Have some fun. Diffuse Color: 91 166 102. Notice the human skin color of the velvet adds some interesting highlights.
So If you want green skin with blue velvet and yellow highlights... Specular Color 101 255 99 and Velvet 198 255 254. Keep in mind that the more neutral (muted, i.e., towards the bottom half of the color picker) the fantasy color, the more "natural" it will look.
Glowing Eyes - Irises only.
Ambient Color: 255 255 10, Ambient Strength 5% - be sure to turn Ambient Active = On. Note that there will be no light cast onto the face, as 3Delight doesn't have emissive surfaces.
Fremen blue within blue eyes of Dune: On Cornea, Irises, Lacrimals and Sclara: Diffuse Color 164 225 255, Ambient Color 48 238 255, Ambient Strength 10%, Ambient Active On.
The best way to learn about surfaces is to "deconstruct" the item, i.e., examine the surfaces of a character or item, where the maps are located and the maps themselves. Repeat these techniques on other items.
Imitation is the best form of flattery after all.
Thank you for the tips, Dracorn!
OK, time for another custom dial-spun character, based upon G3F in this case. This is the result of attempting what I believe to be one of the more difficult morphing tasks, to create a character based upon a real individual. It can be a painstaking and occasionally frustrating exercise. The key to peace of mind is not to become too obsessed and knowing when to say, "Close enough!". Created completely using morph sliders in DAZ Studio, rendered in 3Delight. Click on the thumbnail for full size.
Great-looking character. I would love to see the original you based her on.
Well, for that, you would need to guess who it is, dracorn!
Any resemblance to famous people, living or deceased, is, of course, purely coincidental. 
There is a clue in the name of the image file. Shhhh.
My two cents
I've created a lot of characters over the past twenty years (over 500). When I create a character face I start with the shape of the face. A list of face shapes; hexagon, oval, rectangle, round, square, and triangle. First I'll tackle the female face; I'll tackle the male face later.
Vicky 4's face is an example of an oval face, I'm guessing that's because it find of the standard. First, I'll take on the square face shape. With a square shaped face, the distance from the chin to the forehead should be the same as the distance from cheek to cheek. One things that makes a square face is a weak jaw line makes the face look shorter. On the other hand what makes rectangular face is a strong jaw line which makes the face look longer. What true for a square face dimension wise is true for a round face. The difference is a round is more rounded than the angular shape of a square shaped face. With a hexagon shape, the sides are straight up and down while the jaw line is stronger and the chin is wider to give the a hexagon shape. The triangle face the face taper from cheek to chin with a narrow chin giving the face a sharp triangular shape.
I used Vicky 4 and Morph++ morphs, because I figured most everyone would have them, but that also limited what I could do. The morphs I used have been around since Vicky 2. I only have the ones for Vicky 4, but I'm assuming that they included in all Vickys up to and including Vicky 8
Thanks so much for your 2 cents @Greycat I am going to give a go a soon as I get home as I am in hospital with one of my grandkids ATM!
I must admit that I do have a tendency to dive in randomly sometimes and start tweaking this, then that, in a somewhat haphazard fashion, rather than a more logical, systematic approach. Greycat. I'm guessing that you have developed a far more disciplined workflow, and that probably gets you where you are going without as many missteps and resets that would occur with a more disorganized approach. I certainly would have to agree with that.
I've been debating whether to post a bit that I did up on using reference images to create a custom character using morph sliders. While obviously related to the subject of this thread, it is fairly lengthy (given my propensity for being verbose), and I am reticent about spamming things here. So, rather than adding another rather lengthy post here, I have decided that a separate thread would be a better idea, so I'll be posting a link to it here instead as soon as it is ready, and then I'll link back here in that thread.
OK, thread up, for anyone interested, to be found here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/313466/creating-unique-characters-from-reference-images-using-morph-sliders#latest
I will typically have an idea in mind and try to sculpt it in the mesh. Sometimes it takes a few tries. Thanks for the additional tips and links.
Excellent thread - thanks a lot for creating it, dracorn.