Can someone help explain morphs?

Hi all, I consider myself reasonably capable on daz, but morphs are a nightmare for me. I have a couple of questions... 1 - I've somehow saved over the Basic 8-1 males and females and when I load them up fresh, they now load up with other morphs already applied. This is even more bizarre because when I zero the figure shape and save a character preset, when I load up that character the offending morphs are re-applied?? I've searched for topics with the same issue and seen a couple of suggested solutions going into the data folders > genesis 8_1 morphs, (and nuking it), or reinstalling daz, but these haven't been effective for me because when i paste my downloaded morphs in, sans those core files, it still gets overwritten? Could anybody hand hold my hand through a solution, please? I think this was caused by me trying to make a custom morph in order to reset many morphs into a simpler one. Not sure what I did wrong to cause this nightmare though. 2 - the reason why I wanted to make a one-morph-fits all is because my morph list has become unwieldly. There are too many and the 'currently used' and 'filter' options seem a bit too limited. Are there any ways to organise it so that morphs are easier to track down? It can be hard to know where to find stuff when some fall under body area, or full body or even just under their own names. 3 - is there a way to clear out the data folder so I don't have so many unnecessary morphs clogging up daz and making it slow? 4 - i wanted to save out a few shaping presets, for different body areas, so that i could mix and match, When saving out a preset, I saw that I could select by currently edited morphs. Is this the right approach, or was making a morph asset better? (Even if I messed it up) Thanks for any assists here. I feel beaten down trying to fix the issue in number 1 of my list. And other than that, I guess I'm looking for ways to declutter my morphs, organise them better or understand the best workflow practices.

Comments

  • Kr00kedKr00ked Posts: 6
    edited October 2023

    I actually just saw this topic on the hobgoblin myself, so apologies for not doing enough research on the forums. I didn't know what to look for in particular. I haven't installed a lot of my assets via DIM, which i think makes removal of my morphs difficult. I installed manually by pasting folders into data/people etc.

    What i have done is a complete reinstall of Daz and cleared all but the most essential morphs and now it works, my genesis model is fixed. However, it would be a shame to lose all my downloaded morphs (added manually), that I have backed up. If I were to copy all of my backed up morphs into the Genesis 8-1 folder, the issue returns (hobgoblin issue).

    Is there any way for me to identify the morphs that are causing the issue, remove them from my windows folders and then put the additional good morphs back without hurting the Genesis 8-1 Basic Male/Female? Is this just a drawback of manually installing assets without DIM.

    How would you go about clearing out the data > genesis 8/8-1 morphs folder of deadwood morphs in order to improve load performance? I'd like to streamline my morphs now, knowing they're the major cause of slow load times. I feel like Daz should include a warning about saving morph assets and not labeling them. Could have saved a lot of pain.

    -----

    On morph management and load times, I've resolved to thinking the best practice is to just purge my DATA folder of as many character morphs as possible and slowly introduce only the major segmented body morphs. Bring a lot more careful and selective should make load times faster too, right? Do more with less. Can you guys suggest a list of awesome must have body morphs (that are versatile instead of full body)? Like genesis essentials or 200 male body morphs, aging morphs etc. Those ones are the best and most fun, I find. I feel like just the essentials don't quite give enough options and character morphs too limited.

    ------

    Also, is there a way to restructure morphs that have been downloaded, to say force morphs into 'actor > head' or 'actor > leg' or 'actor > full body'? Some morphs are all over the place not even in 'actor' Thank you for coming back to me

    Post edited by Kr00ked on
  • lilweeplilweep Posts: 2,488

    Kr00ked said:

    I actually just saw this topic on the hobgoblin myself, so apologies for not doing enough research on the forums. I didn't know what to look for in particular. I haven't installed a lot of my assets via DIM, which i think makes removal of my morphs difficult. I installed manually by pasting folders into data/people etc. What i have done is a complete reinstall of Daz and cleared all but the most essential morphs and now it works, my genesis model is fixed.

     

    However, it would be a shame to lose all my downloaded morphs (added manually), that I have backed up. If I were to copy all of my backed up morphs into the Genesis 8-1 folder, the issue returns (hobgoblin issue).

    First of all, consider putting third party content into a separate content directory, don't mix it with your other assets.  You can have as many directories as you want.  In content browser, right click on the list of directories and choose the option for adding a new one, then select the folder on your PC where you will be saving your third party content.

    Is there anyway for me to identify the morphs that are causing the issue, remove them from my windows folders and then put the additional good morphs back without hurting the Genesis 8-1 Basic Male/Female?

    You can look at currently used morphs in Parameters tab, including hidden morphs.   Could be any, including the base morphs. 

    Is this just a drawback of manually installing assets without DIM.

    No, it's a drawback of installing random broken files from who knows where, and mixing them with your good content.

    How would you go about clearing out the data > genesis 8/8-1 morphs folder of deadwood morphs in order to improve load performance?

    crazy how many questions are embedded in this wall of text...

    It might be tedious to extricate products installed manually in an easy way.  In practice just delete them. But if there are dependencies, you will get missing file errors.

    I'd like to streamline my morphs now, knowing they're the major cause of slow load times. I feel like Daz should include a warning about saving morph assets and not labeling them.

    All morphs will have a morph name and a label. not sure how you can have a morph without either.

     On morph management and load times, I've resolved to thinking the best practice is to just purge my DATA folder of as many character morphs as possible and slowly introduce only the major segmented body morphs. Bring a lot more careful and selective should make load times faster too, right? Do more with less. Can you guys suggest a list of awesome must have body morphs (that are versatile instead of full body)? Like genesis essentials or 200 male body morphs, aging morphs etc. Those ones are the best and most fun, I find. I feel like just the essentials don't quite give enough options and character morphs too limited.

     Also, is there a way to restructure morphs that have been downloaded, to say force morphs into 'actor > head' or 'actor > leg' or 'actor > full body'? Some morphs are all over the place not even in 'actor' Thank you for coming back to me

    Vendors, by convention, should put their morphs into the correct /path for the type of morph.  If they didnt do that, then they are completely inept.  You can move them and resave the morph asset if you need to (obviously do this properly so you dont screw up your content library again).  You can drag/drop to move morphs into different path categories in the parameters tab while in Edit Mode, or can edit them by clicking the gear icon. You can also just edit the morph .dsf text file to change paths (i assume).

  • Sorry about the wall of text, seems my phone doesn't like paragraphs. Thank you for this. I'll try these suggestions out and get back
  • I'm currently rebuilding my downloaded asset library away from the DIM assets. I've added my new library into the 'Content Directory Manager' via Preferences and have also mapped it in the Content Library panel.

    I guess I somehow managed to not name a morph asset I was attempting to make, well basically I left it as the defaults and that's how the damage was done.

    As I'm unzipping files, I see my morphs are being added back in to every character I make (at 0.0%), but they're still in there clogging it up. Is there simply no way to not have them 'activated' if they're not going to be used? At best I can only hide them (and i think that works on a character by character basis?)

    I'll try some morph re-organising using the methods you've suggested, thanks! I much appreciate the reply

  • lilweeplilweep Posts: 2,488

    Kr00ked said:

    I guess I somehow managed to not name a morph asset I was attempting to make, well basically I left it as the defaults and that's how the damage was done.

    Not sure what you mean by this.

    As I'm unzipping files, I see my morphs are being added back in to every character I make (at 0.0%), but they're still in there clogging it up. Is there simply no way to not have them 'activated' if they're not going to be used? At best I can only hide them (and i think that works on a character by character basis?)

    If you are asking how to simultaneously have a morph be installed and also not installed, then that is not possible.  If they are present in an active content library, then they will be loaded when the figure loads.

    Is your concern load times?

    Only workaround I can think of is to break up your library into multiple different libraries, essentials and non essentials (i.e., two or more different content directories). You can just add/remove the library folder from the content pane depending on when you need then/dont need them. Could be more hassle than it's worth depending on how often you need to access secondary libraries.

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,889

    Anything in a figure's "Morphs" folder will be loaded everytime the figure is loaded.

    Normally deleting the unwanted files in the "Morphs" folder is all that's required to remove a morph, but the devs added a "cache" to DS and that "cache" is where things are loaded from once they have been "added" to the "cache".

    The problem is the "cache" is meant to auto update itself when something has been removed from the data folder, but in my experience it only does that for things installed/uninstalled with DIM.

    So chances are if you've deleted the files in the "Morphs" folder and they are still there, then you need to clear the "cache" as well.

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