parameters in both Parameters and Shaping panes

sriesch

When looking for parameters that control figure shape, some parameters are found in the Shaping pane, and some are in the Parameters pane. However, some are in BOTH panes. Why both, and/or do I care?

Richard Haseltine

The Parameters pane should have all parameters - the shaping pane will have those in the Actor group that are set as Modifier/Shape.

sriesch

Ok, thanks. I picked one of them that I thought was only in one tab, and now see that it really is in both, the categories are just all shuffled around differently between the two tabs. For instance, in the shaping pane there is a category Genesis > Ears, but in the parameters pane it is actually Genesis > Actor > Head > Ears .

Bejaymac

They needed a system to make it "easier" to find all of the morphs on a TriAx figure, as the differences between the two figure types could leave most of this lot struggling otherwise.

With a Poser figure you are basically dealing with a collection of props, each prop has it's own bone and a collection of morph deltas stored in the targetGeom channels, and it's the bone welds that hold the mesh together.
Normally Poser figures have valueParm channels in the BODY, with ERC code in the targetGeom channels linking them together, now not all morphs are accessed this way many (usually in the Head) require you to select the bone/prop in the scene first.

With a TriAx figure you have a single mesh and a completely separate skeleton, it's only the Weight Maps that actually connect the two, and with a single mesh it means all morphs are technically Full Body Morphs, as a result all of the morph deltas are stored in the BODY, which means when you select a bone in the scene that is all you have done as there isn't any mesh there.

They created the Shaping tab and Regions to stop everyone having to search through the Parameters tab for their morphs. You have the Actor Region that covers the entire mesh, then it's divided into Child Regions which are usually Head, Upper_Body and Lower_Body, each of those is also divided into smaller Child Regions. Their purpose is such that if your looking for say a buttock morph then it should be in the Hip Region in the Shaping tab, same thing if your looking for a breast morph, it should be in the Chest Region, Full Body Morphs like V5 or V6 should be under Actor.
Sadly this isn't the case with many non DAZ products, many only have the morphs under Actor > Vender_name/Product name which can make it a PITFA to find the right morphs, but some are done so badly that they just wont show in the Shaping tab.

Now the Shaping tab with Poser figures can be very hit or miss, with V4 only her Morphs|Shapes dials show up, no Morphforms and no INJection channels, while the 3rd generation don't have anything visible in the tab.