I just purchased Poser 5 and am having trouble tackling the textures in the face room. The fast preview in the face room itself is more photorealistic than what shows up on the model when I render it - even at high quality. How do I get the final model to look more like the fast preview? And yes, I am hitting the "apply to figure" button; the model is conforming to my face room morphs and textures, it just doesn't look as good as the face room's fast preview. Any thoughts?

http://www.dancingbadger.com/poser/faceroom00.html That,s the way it is.

I agree with you and it's something you can compensate for. Depends on what your goals are. Are you unhappy with the morph, the texture or both? Suggestions: Keep the splines for the outside of the head very tight when generating the texture. This will avoid dark streaking in the texture. Lighten the texture some in the texture variations area. They do tend to generate dark. Get the texture applied first and then work on the head morph, making that outer spline the shape of the skull. Don't think you won't have to do postwork on the texture.

Thanks for the links and the advice. To answer your question, fls13, I am unhappy with the texture. The photo texture in the face room preview is more realistic than what is finally rendered from the model, even though the photographic texture has been applied. The quick preview sjust features the photo texture, which is better than the mix of phototexture and poser-texture. For instance, the eyes of the poser character end up with the poser texture, as opposed to the photo texture in the face room. What I would like to get is a texture that is pure photgraph, like the one in the face room.

It's a good idea to make your own eye textures manipped from photos. I probably should go back and do a better job, but this is what I'm working with now, to decent results.

Thanks for the tips.

1. The exported faceroomtexture is only 512x512. U can rework this in Photoshop (or other) to 1500x1500, and use that one. 2. The exported face itself is too small. Scale up the head to 105% and widen it to 102%. 3. The texture is indeed too dark ==> Photoshop. I have seen good use of the faceroom, it is only a shame it does not work on Posette or others. Good luck, Tony

Thanks for the tips, I look forward to trying them out. My main question, however, still goes unanswered. Does anyone know of a way to render a P5 model with the face texture EXACTLY the way it appears in the face room preview. It's odd that that preview is real-time fast and, atleast in my primative attempts, looks better than the rendered texture. I would love to be able to load the photo, morph the face, and render exactly what I see in the fast preview. Any thoughts anyone?

Untill now my renders where always better than the previeuw, so I really cannot comment on this one. Have you tried the P5 and the P4 render engines? It could be better in the P4 renderer as it is usually "scharper" than the P5 renderer. I will give it a go later on. Tony

I disagree with Tony on one point. The 512X512 size is irrelevant because they come out at 150ppi, high quality. It's also a good idea to use 150ppi+ photos as your base.

I got the best results by making a map outside poser applying the photo to Judy's face-template.I just use the faceroom for shape.

OK, faceroomtest performed. I did not see a significant visual difference between aP4 and P5 renderer. Tried different settings , some changes are visible but mothing major. I enclose a screengrab to show the result ( origional = a TV screengrab done with a Hauppauge TV card) Relatively low image quality to start with as Hauppauge TV cards are very good but capture TV quality and No photo quality) The result is better in the render as in the previeuw. But I had "again" to scale the head and the X scale to 105% to get a reasonable head. Look at the "other color" band in the neck between the cheast and the head. Another bug to work around in post editing. See you, and happy renderings, Tony

OK, OK, I schould have changed the eyes, but this was just a quick test. Tony

Tony - Thanks for taking the time to perform the test. I look forward to trying it again. While comparing your two models (fast preview v. rendered), I was able to put my finger on part of the problem I am seeing is the way the lights interact with the model in the pose room: notice how the hotspots on your rendered version make the model look as if it were made out of painted plastic rather than the even flesh tone of the fast preview (I am not criticising your work - I know it's a down and dirty version, unretouched). My point is, I think after seeing your rendered version part of the problem I was having may be correctable with careful use of lighting in addition to texture work. Good tip with the head resizing - my heads were coming out a bit on the smallish side. Thanks again for your hard work!

A few other points: 1. The Face room texture (faceroomSkin) only changes the skinhead, nostrils, eyesockets (eyesockets??) and lips. If you want the photo's eyeballs, you'll need to transfer them to an eyeball texture via 2d software. (Tony's "map", I think.) 2. The lighting in the Face room preview is unspecified. I'm willing to bet that it isn't the default lights. If it is, then your changes to that light will have drastic effects on the Pose room image. And if it is, then it is poor portrait lighting and chances are you won't want to use it, good match to Face room or not. 3. The camera in the Face room is unspecified too, and given CL's penchant for wide-angle lenses, and the look of the Face room face, I'll bet it's a 25-38 mm lens, and hence the face is very distorted in the preview closeups. 4. Instead of using your Face room texture, consider taking your photos into a 2D program and using them to create a normal texture. 5. The 512x512 texture will be blurry. Face it ;) My tutorial (dancingbadger, above) includes some hi-rez comparisons of Judy's hi-rez head texture and the default Face room texture. 300 DPI, if I recall, and a substantial window (maybe 500x600) with all the Firefly bells and whistles. The Face room eyebrows look like they were smeared on with mascara. If you look at the png file in a 2D program, you'll find that this is because, well, they look like they were smeared on with mascara. 6. If you compare a faceroomSkin with the original photos, I'll bet you will find that the Face room darkens the images. This is a bug, as far as I'm concerned. Mick

They smear because of the pixel blending the Face Room does, not the size of the texture. You're better off using a 512X512 texture at 150ppi than using a 1024x1024 texture at 72ppi. As I stated before, you need to do postwork. One of the more effective things to do in post work: Patch over the eye brows from the original photo, which should be 150ppi or more. :O)