Saving Corrective Blend Shapes for Body Morphs in Daz Clothing (Patreon)

Happy Monday everyone!

Today I have a quick early  access video for you in which I'll explain how we can store Corrective  Blend Shapes in our outfit. Much like Joint Corrections, our clothing  can distort when we dial in custom shapes that out outfit doesn't know.  Once again Daz Studio creates an automatic morph but doesn't always know  how to handle this, so it's up to us to make a correction, then save  that morph manually.

This can be done one by one, or you can save  several morphs together if you've made multiple corrections. It's  probably one of the more time consuming things to add to an outfit, but  it assures customers don't run into issues. When you buy Daz original  clothing, there's a long list of characters that need to be supported.  It's optional on other markteplaces, which explains why some cheap  outfits don't perform as well as Daz Originals.

• English Version: https://vimeo.com/922069033/f22cb6aa95
• German Version: https://vimeo.com/922068679/30add10407

In  other news: Over the weekend I had my main workstation in pieces and  installed a new motherboard! That was hard work I don't mind telling  you. I had issues with the BIOS losing settings when I switched off  power at the socket to keep LEDs on my desk from blinking all night,  which pointed to the CMOS battery. That little thing was probably still  the original that had been installed when my PC was made, and when I  took it out, it measured literally 0 Volts. I've replaced it with a new  one that measured 3.3V, but still the settings weren't remembered after  power loss.

Turns out the CMOS connector was lose and no  amount of voltage was getting to the motherboard. Thankfully I bought an  extended warranty with my system, so the friendly folks from PC Server  and Parts offered to have the whole PC sent in for repair. That would  have left me without a main desktop for a week or two.

I have a  backup of course, and a very capable laptop too, as well as my Mac  Studio, so it would have been doable - but I all kinds of other things  can happen when transporting a 30kg piece of tech, and I decided I'll do  the board swap myself instead. What could possibly go wrong, right?

Sure  enough the new board arrived on Saturday morning and I took the  afternoon off to put it in. The hairiest part was removing all those  components to actually access the board and pry it loose from the  chassis, but I prevailed. I like taking my sweet time over the smallest  details, making notes and taking pictures just in case I can't remember  which cable goes where.

Once the board was out, it was  time to swap over the 256GB of system RAM stick by stick, making sure  they all end up in the same positions as before. Apparently on dual CPU  systems it's important to feed RAM into particular alternating slots for  best performance, but since I had a template this was relatively easy  to do.

Next up were the two massive CPUs and coolers. Those are  spring loaded and screwed into the board with four Torx 30 screws, which  is something I didn't have a screwdriver for.

Interestingly,  that screw is somehow compatible with a simple hex connector I had, but  because most screws were recessed at the bottom of the cooler, my beefy  extension didn't fit through the holes. This meant I had to use a very  fine and lithe screwdriver with a tiny handle, which proved tricky  because I needed a good amount of oomph to turn those screws, and that  tiny handle didn't allow me to apply that.

To make matters  worse, it is vital to unscrew them in a particular order, or else the  spring loaded mechanism that keeps several hundred contacts in place on  the board might get damaged.

I briefly considered walking into  Best Buy, but decided to use all my might and hope the screwdriver  wouldn't break, and try for as long as it takes instead. Sure enough,  eventually the screws got lose and I could swap the CPUs.

Putting  them back in place was also tricky: you have to affix the first screw  and keep going (in a particular order), then press hard on the cooler so  the last screw can go in and complete the pressure - all the while  making sure you're not breaking things.

Once done I had to  re-assemble the whole thing, making sure every cable and fan I  previously took out was put back in the right place, followed by  re-seating all PCIe cards. On this occasion I noticed two additional  slots I didn't know I had, and one leftover Torx screw that I found in  the box of the motherboard. A spare perhaps? Or something of vital  importance?

Who knows, my desktop is up and running again, and so  far everything seems fine. I had to have a serious chat with Windows 11  about the fact that this is NOT in fact a new machine, log in again on  multiple services multiple times, check if there was a BIOS update and  many other things, but it's all working again and I'm super happy about  it.

As if that was not enough, I've finished off the day by  installing a new XP Pen Display on Julia's desk so that she has a  decently large monitor with better colours for her work, but I might  leave that story for another day.

Have a fantastic week my people, be creative and enjoy the process with these exciting tools we call 3D Software!