Less Morphs can be more when posing

3dOutlaw

This is just a quick post for the new to Daz, and a reminder for myself.  

When creating a typical human-like character, remember that less is more with regards to morphs.  Everyone has a tendency to add a morph, add a little more, another and another, and then you end up with a ton of morphs.  The problem then surfaces when you try and use a pose.  This is best demonstrated in a picture.  I was making a Sakura morph that was based on Smart Doll dimensions (by Danny Choo), and ended up adding a lot of morphs.

As seen in the top left (1), the figure was what I intended, but the morphs failed miserably because of so many changes to the shape.  This led to a lot of aggravation trying to correct the pose.

If I just used G2F without morphs (2), as seen in the right, the shape was NOT what I wanted, but the poses worked great!   

So the solution was to re-create the morph trying to use as little morphs as I could (3).  Scaliing the whole figure wont bother poses.  So to get the petite size I scaled down, and then extended the legs.  (legs are easier to correct than arms/shoulders/hands/fingers/etc)  A waist and figure correction and was done.  As you can see it was very close to my original and the pose worked much better.

So try and create character with less morphs, and your poses will work better!

SixDs

Are you saving your morphs prior to posing, Outlaw? The reason that I ask is because I have many custom morphs that I have made, including many for G2F, and most use quite a large number of morph sliders, but I have not really had any serious problems with posing them. However, I do tend to save the morphs as Morph assets prior to using them. I also tend to adjust the rigging to shape, especially if using any sort of scaling, and also use ERC freeze, all before saving them. That seems to work for me.

(I would certainly agree in principle that it is always preferable to use as few morphs as possible to achieve the desired results - it is certainly easy to get carried away and lose track of what has been used when dealing with more complex morphs.)

3dOutlaw

Hi, @SixDs I don't typically, I just create the character, and then save them as a scene subset, to use whenever I need them.  I do save things like custom facial expressions and head size changes (to fit hair) as Morph Assets.  Just not characters.

I did not think the adjust rigging to shape was needed for slider/dialed in morphs, but more for imported OBJ morphs, as the vendors already did the "dirty work"?  I guess I could have pointed out that this was more on sliders/dialed in morphs that could change the characters shape like a Character Preset such as Aiko, Keiko, Victoria Supermodel, etc.  Things like eye open close, thigh tone, and such, won't affect the pose too much.