One of the staples of the DAZ Studio software is the multitude of body morphs available for the DAZ figures. Not just the large volume of morphs that come with the DAZ software but the millions of morphs that are available, in many cases free, for use in DAZ. You can get free packs with literally over a hundred different body morph adjustments.

This is why it is so strange to me that there does not seem to be a lot of custom morphs available among the iClone software. Although iClone does not make it as easy to add morphs as DAZ, iClone does support full body morphs. With G5 characters it was a little bit of a pain because of the upper and lower meshes...if you wanted an full body morph you needed to sync the upper and lower morphs. However, with G6 characters the whole body is one mesh and thus it is even easier to create full body morphs. Consider a character that can change from Nathan to a werewolf right before your eyes. Or character changing from a average build to a over-muscled build (try to describe a common superhero transformation without infringing on any copyrights). How about a zombie skull that caves in as it is hit by a baseball bat. How about a creature extracting its claws? Or a nose actually being flattened when it is punched? All these are just one mesh away from being reality in iClone.

Take a character mesh, export the G6_Body mesh or CC_Body mesh, modify it in your 3D editing program, load as a Expression Morph to your original character, and assign the morph to one of the 6x4 custom slots. Now, in iClone, you can use Face Puppet to apply the morph. Best of all you can either apply the morph instantly or over time (thus allowing iClone to show the transformation from one state to the other).

I am surprised that RL has not promoted this development more. In my opinion it is a very powerful option and I hope we see more Morph content in the future. I have even used this technique for Morph Props (props which can be animated or changed by using provided morphs). My Shoe Construction Set Base allows the morphing of a running shoe into all kinds of shoes (such as high heel, hiking, boot, dress and slippers). My Real Wear corset provides a morph so that it can be opened and closed (which would have been very hard to do using ordinary position/rotate functions) and so on.

However, it appears that RL does not think that Morphs are all that important. As of now, there isn't even any support in Marketplace to sell morphs. Yes, you can sell a avatar with morphs attached but this limits the number of morphs provided to 24 because 3DXchange only supports (6x4) 24 custom slots. What if I want to create a bunch of custom morphs, for example that add various monster features, and the set includes more than 24 morphs? I have been told that Marketplace prohibits the distribution of OBJ files in a ZIP (the method that I used to sell my morphs previously). This means if I have more than 24 morphs I need to provide multiple avatars with the morphs applied. But now, in order to mix and match the morphs, the customer needs to extract the morphs into OBJ him/herself and then apply the desired ones to his/her character. How cumbersome!

So I say...

RL: Please provide us a proper way for us to sell Morph packs which have more than 24 morphs (without having to spread them over multiple avatars).

Users: Get morphing! It is easy and can be very powerful! 


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Peter now has several times announced that will come a CC Pipeline version and that is certainly the possibility that you want here.

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liebe Grüße vidi

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Vidi, I think you missed my point. iClone already has support for full body morphs (which work on G5, G6 and CC characters). CC PIPELINE is needed for modifying any of the CC meshes such as the CC clothing or CC eye (but the CC character mesh is not a CC mesh...it can be modified using the Replace Mesh function in 3DXChange without needing CC PIPELINE). What I was saying is that unlike DAZ Studio where Body Morphs are one of the reasons that DAZ is so successful, the exposure of morphs in iClone (even though they are supported) has been minimal. A quick check of the Marketplace shows that very few products use dynamic morphs (morphs that can be applied in iClone using Face Puppet). Most contents just provide a static morphed base (e.g. my Buff Chuck, Athletic Chuck and so on) but very few actually using dynamic morphing. For example, we can use iClone and 3DXChange (as is) to create a character that can turn into a werewolf, hunchback, robot, rockman, whatever. And I don't mean just a base that looks like that, I mean a normal base that changes into the morphed base.


"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

to create a character that can turn into a werewolf, hunchback, robot, rockman, whatever

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liebe Grüße vidi

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yes what vidi said the facial morph although it can be done doesn't work well and its just a side effect of it.   Usually the hands get mangled for instance.    The other thing is the G5 skeleton never accomodated extreme shapes this is something they have been working on for G6 is the ability to accomodate more extreme shapes and it was announced as a feature.  I am reasonably certain this stuff will be present in the pipeline CC/exchange combo when its done.    

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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. Seuss

That was my point. It actually works really great but because it was intended for Expressions it does not get recognition that it could.




"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

Content developers seem to be confused about G6 characters vs CC characters. These are two different types of characters and their meshes and content is not compatible. Both G6 and CC character meshes are (what I call) G6 meshes meaning they can be extracted via 3DXChange, modified and then applied using Replace Mesh. However, the clothing layer is different. G6 character have their clothing in the character mesh in the form of a G6 mesh (like the rest of the character). CC character, on the other hand, have a CC clothing mesh. Although you can export CC meshes, modify them and use the Replace Mesh on them, they will only show the modification in 3DXchange but not in iClone. This is what the CC Pipeline will allow us to do (among other things). The important conclusion from this is that G6 characters have their clothing made by editing the meshes of existing G6 clothing or by replacing the clothing mesh completely. Typically these complete replacements of the mesh are sold as G6 Cloth bases. You buy the G6 Cloth base that you like and then can apply textures/opacity to fine tune the clothing item. You cannot apply G6 Clothing to CC characters because the clothing is part of the G6 base. Clothing for CC characters, on the other hand, is based on CC bases (either the few free ones from CC or ones that you can buy from the CC Essentials clock). At this time the CC bases cannot be edited by you can apply textures/opacity to fine tune the bases. CC clothing will not work on G6 characters.

So as I see it, even when CC PIPELINE comes out, I doubt there will be any support for G6 characters in it. I also doubt that they will put direct integration into iClone so that you can record appearance transformations. I extracted a number of the morphs from CC and applied them to my CC as Expression morphs to allow me to transition the appearance within iClone. Previous I was even selling this morph set but the new CC EULA prohibits this so I took down the content from my store. However, as far as I understand, the issue was not with the process but the fact that I was selling unmodified CC morphs. This means anyone with 3DXChange can export the morphs (i.e. apply single morph, export Avatar, export to OBJ in 3DXChange) and then attach them (up to 24 of them at a time) to their CC character to allow them to perform the morph transition directly in iClone.



"We often compare ourselves to the U.S. and often they come out the best, but they only have the right to bear arms while we have the right to bare breasts"
Bowser and Blue, Busting The Breast

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liebe Grüße vidi

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yup time to wait and see the two original avatars were put out like that until they could prepare others this is what reallussion said.   G6 bone structure seems to have a few extra twist bones I see no difference between any of the new guys really.      I am quite sure we wont be waiting much longer and I think by christmas we will have all the new bits to work with to make neat characters.   Meanwhile I continue to have fun and enrolled in a clay sculpting course that looked interesting as the techniques as far as basic rules of certain things like human anatomy apply regardless if i am using voxel clay or real live wet clay.  I spend a good 6 months of the year taking courses in various interesting things either in 3d stuff or an art course because i find it fun ^^

CC is G6 and so where the two original all one needs to do is look at the labels in the 3dexchange to see this.  They are the same they simply completed work on the CC to make the original 2 morphable and gave them each a new name.   

I dont speculate there is not much point to it.   They are soon going to be releasing details on the cc pipeline which will remove the need for any further speculation

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"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Dr. Seuss

Meanwhile I continue to have fun and enrolled in a clay sculpting course did Looked interesting as the techniques as far as basic rules of Certain things like human anatomy apply Regardless if i am using voxel clay or real live wet clay.

< Often I think we are very similar urbanlamb  

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liebe Grüße vidi

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