Hello, as mentioned, I'm learning Poser & other 3D packages from the beginning. One of the goals is learning to make clothes   & hair . Let's say, for example, Davide, Amish & Andreas   make morphs for Posette... then I make a 17th century dress for Posette... & I'd like everybody to be able to use the dress with their favourite Posette morphs. My question is:   Is there any legal obstacle which prevents me from transferring the morphs made by Davide, Amish & Andreas into the dress ? I'd like to make such items for everyone but don't want to get on the   wrong side of anyone whose morphs I used to make the dress. Thank you kindly for your assistance !

Hi
To transfer i.e. Posette morphs to a dress the dress would have to be based on the same geometry as Posette.
That means the main copyright issue would be with the original owners of the Posette geometry.
If you make your own original mesh, the morphs wouldn't work anyway. Most creators use magnets for this job, or make dynamic clothing, that's kind of "self fitting"

____________

Hmmm... so, if a 3D clothing designer uses a utility (e.g. Morph Manager, Morphing Clothes, etc.) to transfer (from one CR2 to another CR2) morphs made by a morph designer, such as yourself, to a humanoid figure made by MetaCreations/Curious Labs, now owned by Bondware... then the issue about copyright is not so much between the 3D clothing designer & the morph designer... but rather a potential issue exists between the 3D clothing designer & the humanoid figure owner? Is that what it boils down to?

The problems are not the morphs alone. They only work on the base mesh or a mesh made of this geometry.
If you use the Posette mesh, cut it and make a clothing item out of it, you cannot distribute this as it is.
If you model your own clothing from scratch the morphs for Posette wouldn't work on them anyway and you would have to make your own set of morphs to make it fit. My English isn't too good and I hope I could make it clear

____________

Thank you kindly, Andreas. Your English is fine, it's my current understanding as a relative newbie which I'm working on improving. I haven't gotten to lessons on making clothes yet... I was just wondering that if I got to making clothes then, "After I modelled, UV mapped, textured & rigged, how would I get the dress to be compatible with morphs from various sources? Could I add all the morphs to a Posette figure... then use a utility like Morph Manager to transfer the morphs from the Posette figure CR2 to the dress CR2? Then anybody can use the dress with their favourite morphs." That was my thinking... but I wondered about the legality of including your morphs in my dress. Thank you very much, your assistance is kindly appreciated !

I understand then that, when I make a dress from scratch - even if you, Amish & Davide granted me permission to include your morphs in the dress I make - since Posette is the SOURCE CONTAINER of the morphs for my dress which is the TARGET CONTAINER of the morphs... there might be a legal issue with Bondware, because I used their figure as the SOURCE carrier for my dress which is the TARGET carrier of the morphs made by you, Amish & Davide.

If you make clothing from scratch there's no legal issue, but morphs made for the base figure will not work on them.
A morph is basically a file containing the modified coordinates in relation to the base mesh they are made for an will only work for this geometry. If you want to fit clothing to a morphed character you have to make a own set of morphs to resemble the shape. There a re tools out there to do this job, but not for free...

____________

May I make an analogy with basic MMD pose files ? They're short and plain-text, easy to study and edit in eg Notepad...

Most MMD .PMD/.PMX figures down-load in an 'A' pose, but Poser-rigging of their exported OBJ mesh is best begun with a 'T' pose.

Very tedious to pose free MMD figures in free PMX Editor, which seems to lack Poser's so-handy joint dials. So, a 'T' pose file is worth saving. Also, being plain-text, pose file is easily edited to *precisely* mirror L/R, tweak posture etc etc.

But, this pose file will only work reliably for *that* figure and its close kin. Ghastly results for any figure less related, as mesh, rigging 'bones' and/or joint positions do not match...
--

I stumbled across this while learning the rudiments of Poser rigging (WIP) from DAD's classic 'How d'you Do That ?' book. Some fun MMD figures are delightfully low-poly, and copying their joint positions offered a stepping stone towards the 'Good Stuff'. Okay, I've not made much progress, been distracted by domestic plumbing problems. Could NOT focus on rigging's OCD-grade workflow, have used iterative Poser scene-building as therapy.

Meanwhile, I've found some free, minimal stick / tube PMX figures which bear comparison with DAD's low-poly examples...

As Ahjah says, if you make any clothes/content for Posette, and the mesh from which your clothes/content are made, has been made by you alone (even if you shape it after a part of Posette's mesh), it's your work and you are the owner.  

Before you then add morphs created by someone on this forum look at the readme for their T&C's.  If you are unclear and the member is active, send a PM to get them to clarify their terms of use with regards to your proposed content and their work (save the confirmation messages).  

Apart from two morphs LC & NJ, where their restriction of use is in clean images only, all of my content is unrestricted use, so you can be as creative as you please in their addition to your clothes/content.

____________
I've found that to do well with any figure you really need to have a passion for that figure,

...and I hope you develop that passion for yours.

Thank you very much all !

I see what you're saying: morphs are made for 1 specific geometry OBJ & will only work PROPERLY for THAT SPECIFIC mesh alone... no other mesh.

"There a re tools out there to do this job, but not for free..." This is what I had in mind.

At DAZ3D, I bought Dreamlight's Hexagon tutorial bundle on sale. And at Renderosity, I bought Dimension3D's Morphing Clothes application, which I tried out yesterday & successfully transferred body morphs from Stephanie3's bodysuit onto Stephanie3's body. So, now I have most of Stephanie3's body morphs... even though I didn't purchase her body morphs.

I thought, if I learn to make clothes for Posette with Hexagon, can I then load all Posette body morphs into a Posette figure... then use the Morphing Clothes application to transfer all those body morphs into the dress I make. That way anyone can use the dress with their favourite Posette character.

But my concern is that I don't own the copyright to the Posette morphs, & I didn't want to make a clothing item with them in & then find out I've upset anyone.

"send a PM to get them to clarify their terms of use with regards to your proposed content and their work (save the confirmation messages)." Thank you kindly for the advice as well as permission to use your morphs.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated !

Hi rico

Yes, I think you got me. Your example  with S3 works so well because the bodysuit is based on the same mesh as the base figure. If you look at the two items in mesh view you'll notice the similarity. Be prepared that  morph transfer between two more different geometries will not work this smoothly, especially with lower poly meshes.

____________

Yes indeed.

I was just thinking about that now ... if I recall correctly, I think I noticed a tiny bit of (what's the correct word ) 'unintended deformation'... in other words, the morphs from SP3's bodysuit didn't appear 100% accurate on SP3's body, but more like 98% accurate.

I guess it's because, although the bodysuit morphs are very close to the body geometry of SP3, they are not 100% exactly like SP3's intended body morphs.

"...you cannot distribute this as it is."

Too right. This was why, back in P4 days, there were utilities such as ObjAction Mover by 'Maz' which 'encoded' derivative files to the base model. Which you had to have before the derivative would unpack...

I've had problems trying to figure which version of a legacy model matched an old freebie encoded thus. Even Posette went through multiple versions, with differences often as minimal as CR2's 'bake date'. But, such change the file sufficiently to block decoding.

IIRC, I'd found a long-long-lost 'mermaid tail' in the depths of a long-forgotten slide-mount archive drive. It would not decode to P_11's Posette. Or P_10's. Or P-7's...

Yes, had to be an *original* original P4. Which, yes, I also had, tucked away on a different archive drive...

Inspection of their files' CRC-32 data showed a very few bytes difference, mostly due to the bake-date of each re-compilation. Which is why I quoted the relevant CRC-32 'fingerprint' when I posted about my hunt...
. . .

IIRC, if you strip out a Poser figure CR2 morphs to the bare mannequin, use that mesh as base for armour, clothes etc, that's probably acceptable. In fact, I think I've seen examples in the Poser manual.

And, several 3rd-part figure crafters even offer such 'stripped' figures to encourage clothing designers to support their product.

But, and it is a VERY BIG legal 'but', such only applies where allowed. SP3's Daz is almost as protective of even legacy figures as eg Disney...

Have you looked at 'dynamic' clothing ?? I can't figure how that fitting tool works, but it may  side-step your morph issues...

Another route may be 'CrossDresser'. IIRC, the core utility is free, but each 'target' figure requires a license. Some licenses are free, some 'budget', some sale-discounted, YMMV...

Yes indeed.

I plan on including dynamic clothing... but since I'm learning Poser (Ray Dream, Amapi, Hexagon, etc.) from the beginning (from Poser 3), I'm sticking with learning how to make conforming clothes at the moment before I learn to make dynamic clothes.

Also, since conforming clothes require less computing power during rendering, they would perform better on this little laptop... if I get a more powerful desktop computer with dedicated graphics card (as Poser 11.3 recommends a minimum 2GB CUDA card) then I'll probably use dynamic clothes & hair more frequently.

For toon renders, I think conforming clothes would do fine in most cases where realism is not as much of an expectation as in realistic renders.

I downloaded the free CrossDresser licences for P4Boy & P4Girl. God-willing, when I have spare cash then I can purchase the P4Man & P4Woman licences, along with licences for other figures.

Yesterday, I purchased 3DU's HiroToon & Staci Basics on sale! For now, my little budget for 3D this month has been used up. As a presently unemployed citizen, I need to think thrice before spending the little pennies in my pocket.

I was wondering if I should rather purchase Markus Dunn's Pegasus clothing modeller instead, which I wanted for quite some time, after reading favourable reviews about it , but realised that it would be wasted on me at this time & just collect dust for some time. Because right now I first want to learn modelling clothes 'the hard way', manually, with traditional general modelling applications. If God spares me, I might purchase Pegasus later if a favourable opportunity is presented, to make modelling clothes easier.

For now though, learning Poser 3 & 4, Ray Dream Studio 5, Amapi 6, Amorphium & Python are first on the radar. It's going to take some time, but I want to build a solid foundation. Once the foundation is solidly formed, I can develop faster at learning the newer aspects of 3D rendering & animation.

Posette Forever represents a great place to learn from far more skilled & experienced artists so that I too can contribute to the amazing generosity of resources from which I benefit today. I like browing through the gallery for inspiration & sometimes I   wonder "How did they do that?" or "Where did they get those clothes from" or "Why does their render look so good?" While I read some of the explanations in posts, some of it doesn't make sense to me at the moment. For goodness' sake, I only realized what Image Based Lighting is this week. It might take some time but every 3D artist was once a newbie as I am at present.

I thank & applaud you all, sincerely, for Posette Forever, your kind advice, generous freebies & the friendly atmosphere which prevails    . May you be blessed .

"I thank & applaud you all, sincerely, for Posette Forever, your kind advice, generous freebies & the friendly atmosphere which prevails . May you be blessed ."

Well I'm glad that you like one important part of Posette Forever, which is part of how we operate, we like to promote that which is free, so that even someone with very little income will not feel left out, in taking part in our art.

We understand however there are certain items that money is required for such as Poser itself.  However we try not to talk too much about commercial offerings but look to free alternatives if possible.

One area in Posette Forever where you'll find some talk about paid products is in the forum space for the The Ugly Step Sisters.

____________
I've found that to do well with any figure you really need to have a passion for that figure,

...and I hope you develop that passion for yours.