Hi Well trying to make a character from V3. The first version I tried was described by my missus as A raving transvestite or man in drag. (btw I have nothing against the above it was just not the effect I was trying to get.) Anyway my question is what atributes make a face Female? Dave

Attached Link: Linda

I live for these questions. I just did a Linda Evangelista on V3 and I used to work fashion as make up artist. Men and women can have similar shaped faces but still be very maculine or feminine. Speaking generally I can offer some thoughts. ----------------------------------------------- First size matters. Genrally.......... Female features are smaller than their male counterparts on the outside of the face. Smaller Jaw, forehead, ears, and skull but larger eyes, fuller lips. The exception is the nose which is generally smaller on women. Male Features are the opposite, larger on the outside of the face. Larger jaw, forhead, ears, and skull but smaller eyes, thinner lips. The exception is the nose which is larger on men than women. ------------------------------------------ Men or women can have soft, round or angular features but there are some differences. Angluar shapes on men are generally square or retangular. On women they are more pinty and diamond shape...catlike. Rounder features on men for more wide like a rounded square. On women the shapes are more round or tall and oval. ----------------------------------------------------------- The matter of what makes beauty is different than what makes something female. When polled in a would wide study, peoples of all nations voted these qualities when asked "What makes someone beautiful to you" 1) Sooth nice skin 2) Groomed appearance 3) Fitness 4) Even teeth Another survey found a link between proportioned faces. Here is an image I did examining common lines and proportions base on a square. Notice how things change after being lined up. There are other templates around.

Attached Link: Beauty mask by Dr Stephen Marquart

Here is a mask and link to a site by a man I have had the pleasure to speak to many times, Dr Marquart. This site is facinating.

I made my own mask some time ago. I can pretty much eyeball alot of it now but I just dug it up and dropped it on my pic of Linda. A pretty good fit. I used perspective in Photoshop to match the tilt of her face lining up the lips and eyes to the mask. I hope this is making some sense or helpful in some way. Regards, Anton

All good info, Anton. Things like this fascinate me, too. A few years ago I was involved in a project to create a database of facial types; the idea was to be able to dial up any face by choosing from a list of identikit options. The work is copyright to my former employers, so I can't use any of it here, unfortunately. However, one useful thing I did take with me is the knowledge that all faces are pretty much the same, after allowances are made for skin and eye colour, weight and factors such as scars and birthmarks. Eyes are pretty much always the same size, and in the same place, lips are more or less the same, and so forth. Yes, there are differences, but they are much less than we percieve. All of which is echoed in anatomy and art reference books, which always concentrate on the "canon". A good deal of the individuality we see in a face is due more to our own perceptions than anything else, which means that creating a reasonable likeness of some real person can be doubly difficult. That said, it's also more of an interesting challenge, too.

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Oh I would love to have seen what your company was working on. Sounds interesting. Reminds me of police sketch software. Dave, Some other things are spacing. Men have thicker eyebrows that are closer to the eye than most women. Men's eyebrows are generaly straighter and lower. This womens brows are genally thinner, higher and less straight. Men also generally have a larger amount of space between their upper lip and nose. The mustache area on women is usually smaller.

Anton, the inspiration was taken from police sketch software. The idea was to be used in 3D gaming, to create realistic individual people based on real soccer players. Sadly, the system never went beyond the development stage.

I see. I remember reading about it once. So much good research is lost in proprietery development that gets scrapped.

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At the risk of starting a flame, has anyone considered that there is a bit of cultural bias in this whole conversation? How well do, for example, Hindi sculptures of beautiful women fit all these assumptions? I guess I'm curious about the question rather than the answer. What do we mean by "makes a woman a woman"? Are we looking for the details of a stereotype (that is, a mental representation rather than an artifact)? Or for the biological/physiological differences--which is where this started, sort of? See, the trouble is, what makes a woman a woman is one thing--the one warned about in "before you start." Women who look like Golda Meir are still women, neh? What makes a woman's face is genetics and hormones, and we all have both the male and female hormones surging around inside, regardless of sexual orientation or identity. A woman with "excess" facial hair (Anna Magnani, for example, or Katy Jurado) can be utterly and vehemently female, and a man with long eyelashes, delicate features, and a barely discernable adam's apple may be as heterosexual as a tomcat. So we are talking about the visual clues that tell us a man in drag is a man in drag, that Julie Andrews is not Victor but Victoria. Then we are talking about culturally determined and racially charged assumptions. Not making any accusations here, but think about it. The Western tradition of white beauty does not become universal when it decides to welcome in the occasional dose of melanin.

This is fascinating Anton! Thanks for sharing with us. Is there anything you don't know? lol

Yes, this is definitely fascinating stuff!!! Are there similar "masks" or studies for perfect body proportions as well?

Anton... is this only applicable for women? How about getting the chiseled look for men on V3?

Attached Link: PHI : The divine Proportion

Deecey See this link. The rule of "Phi" works across nature, The finger uses it..as does the arm..etc. Haven't seen any templates nearly as detailed as the face ones. You'd need alot of naked people to do the research so that may be why there has been more focus on the face which is almost never covered. mickmca, Noone has mentioned race or culture. Human beings are human beings. PapaBlueMarlin, Masks work more on determining structural postion so they work on men like Tom Cruise etc. There are sliggtly different templates for men. I'll see if I can dig up an example Reality Poison, Yeah I don't know how to make everyone happy and not offend at least one person. If I find the answer I will be sure to share that too. lol

Thanks, Anton, this is fascinating! 8-)

"Noone has mentioned race or culture. Human beings are human beings." Yeah, I know that nobody mentioned it. That's why I mentioned it. Human beings are indeed human beings, but standards of beauty are culturally determined and therefore culturally biased. The discussion is fascinating, but let's not lose track of the fact that we are talking about a specific, if broadly influential, concept of beauty/feminity, not biological imperatives. A "real woman" can have a face like Leo McKern; it doesn't make her less a woman, and to say her face is not "female" is a bit impertinent. The discussion of what makes a "female" face is about forms (in the Platonic sense), not reality (in the bio/physiological sense). And forms are things cultures create. Let's not lose track of that.

^_^

Attached Link: http://www.beautyanalysis.com/index2_mba.htm

mickmca, the race issue was mentioned a little on the site Anton gave.

bookmark. interesting discussion.

Okay, looking over the examples, I noticed a couple of things, for what they may be worth. The grid is just an average of a typical human skull. That's not likely to change much: if you look at the examples of the "average" woman, she fits the grid just as easily as the "supermodel gorgeous" women, and it was pretty telling that the examples they cited for "below average" and "downright unattractive" women were two people who appeared to have been born with physical disfigurements. Also, the grid has an "openess" about it that allows it to mask the fact that, in the historical instances, some noses were longer, some lips were smaller, some eyes were differently shaped. So how reliable is a "mask" that really isn't much of a standard to begin with? Insofar as the race thing, I think we've all noticed instaces where an African American texture for Vicky gets trotted out and we can all tell it's just a darkened version of a Caucasian texture. And that's because there are no race-based morphs to make the presentation complete.

Fascinating Stuff! As for the race issue, you can usually stick an Asian face in the mask, or an African face, etc., and still get similar results. I saw a show about this on the Learning Channel... or was it the Discovery one? :D

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"...the race issue was mentioned a little on the site Anton gave." I dug around there a bit. Their only comment on race that I could find was in "The Evidence," which asserts that if their theory is true, then the PHI mask should apply to faces thought beautiful by all cultures. They illustrate that it "does" with images of 13 Caucasian women and the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. "All cultures"? A timeline tour of Western beauties of the centuries, anchored by a sculpture that we, not necessarily the ancient Eqyptians, regard as beautiful. Not very persuasive. They finally lost me when I got to the "archetypal theory" and their assertion that fitting the PHI ideal is not just an image of "beauty," but an image of "humanness." I Quote: "That is, it is the way we identify our own species, and individuals within our species." Wow. Combine that with the page that shows an "attractive" Aryan face degenerating by steps into an "unattractive" face with a broad nose, and I think I know this place I've wandered into, better than I wish I did. I'll shut up now. Except to say that Stephen Jay Gould has written some excellent books and essays on racially and culturally biased "sciences."

I think maybe you didn't go far enough because I was looking in the "Face Variations," a subpoint of "Mask Applications." The site includes some text as follows: "Ongoing research is focused on detailing more specific variations from the mask particularly with regard to the American Indians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians and Australian Aborigines." "Many beautiful faces consist of or resemble a combination or composite of subtle variations of ethnic qualities even if they are specifically derived from or genetically specific to a particular ethnicity that their face resembles. Although physical resemblance implies a probable genetic similarity it does not demand or guarantee a genetic similitude, particularly as a face approaches the attractive configuration of the archetypal mask."

Speaking of body-shape, I seem to recall there's a certain hip/waist ratio for women generally described as "most attractive" across many cultures. If I recall, I think the number's 1.2- or you could pull out your sister's/daughter's barbie doll and a tape measure, since most of those figures were specifically designed to fit that ratio. The arguement behind the hip/waist ratio is the size of the birth canal which makes it attractive, if you buy that ("Good, childbearing hips" at the risk of sounding sexist...) Breast size is another issue entirely, since it varies so much from person to person, and preferences vary from male to male.

TO PapaBlueMarlin: Ok, that softens the blow a bit, I agree. I didn't find that page, in about twenty minutes of digging around. And I'm curious enough that I'd like to see where they end up when they pursue this. But I'm afraid I'm still very uncomfortable with the ideas these MBA folks are espousing. I look at that PHI "ideal" and all I have to do is imagine applying it to the roundfaced "beauties" in the movies and advertising and TV shows coming from Asian countries, much less the Japanese depictions of beauty in The Floating World, and I am immediately unpersuaded. I think the problem for me is that ambituous extension of this stuff into some sort of universal. Sure, they are on the right track, as regards the standards of beauty that govern the Western tradition (which have theoretical origins in Ancient Greece). But identifying our preferences, however hoary with generations of acceptance, with "what makes us look human" is way over a line I'm not willing to cross. M

Make sure her eyes stay attractive.

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Beauty is subjective ..and strongly influenced by cultural trends. Many of the artists here are 'trained' in classic Western art, which of course focuses on European races and ideas of beauty. However this thread started as 'What makes a person look female' , lets not get too distracted by racial ideals :)

Don't know if anybody mentioned it, but Anton.s L Evangelisa was dead on!! Wow! Emily

Hi folks It seems that I've open the proverbial can of worms. My problem, and perhaps I could have phrased the question a little less flippantly, was and is "what characteristics make a face appear to be feminine as opposed to masculine." I actually have my own Ideas of beauty i.e.I dislike a woman who smokes for instance I find that a complete turnoff but hey thats me..What I'm saying is she might be regarded by everyone else as the epitome of Aphrodite but for me at least she looses all/most of her attractivnes as soon as she lights up. This is different to the physical aspects of a Female/Male face. The comment in the title was a bad attempt to discourage comments about a persons mind/attitude or more bodily atributes. Attached is one version of Selina (V3)she still to me does not look quite right I think the mouth (I havn't tried the mask idea yet) But all in all I like the discussion Dave

Btw I know she's frowning but that is due to what she sees and the wind in the image I want to put her in.

try applying the germanic head morph or making the mouth a little more narrow.

TheWanderer... I would try making a more distinct nose, the one shes got looks like surgery... and more lines... (use a bump-map)... ... just my opinion...

If all you want is to make a new character face try loading all your V3 Head MTs onto a default V3.cr2, to be know from here on as V3 Default.cr2. Morph Manager is really good for this. Soon it wiil be able to load several characters MTs onto a single Master.cr2 all at once, but for now you need to do this one character part(Head) at a time. Then load that V3 Master.cr2 into a scene, and run ockham's Zero MTs.py Python Script. Now all of the new MTs will be reset to zero, and you won't be working with a hideous monster. Right about now saving and making a compressed backup archive of this file, on a removable drive, is propbable a good idea. Ok, enlarge the size of the document window as big as your UI will allow, and plop an attractive hairpiece on her. After that, get her face centered with the Face Cam, and that cam's Focal Length dial right where you want it. I find super face closeups unattractive, and usually set her face back a bit and a nudge. Then comes the meat of this technique, you just shimmy down the Head dials one at a time adjusting each just a smidge, posotive, negative, or not at all. Be sure to really put an effort on here, this is just cause for serious consentration and FocUs! If you hap hazardly approach it you're results will reflect that...I would'nt try doing it all at once either. Somewhere after about 750 MTs you'll start to have an attractive new character, but that has taken me weeks! I usually do about an hour a day or so., whenver I feel up to it. When you save your progress use a different name like V3 Master Beta.cr2(No Pun inteneded...) I usually wait on giving it a real name until I've gone through all the MTs. Once you've done that Spawn a new Head MT and give it a name like "V3 New Figure" Next, make a save to the Figures Library as "V3 New Figure Master.cr2." Break out Morph Mananger again, load your V3 New Figure Master.cr2, and your V3 Default.cr2. Then just copy over that one new V3 New Figure Head Spawn MT, from your V3 New Figure Master.cr2 to your V3 Default.cr2, and save the V3 Default.cr2 as "V3 New Figure.cr2!" Now you can animate your new character without processing/transfering a 100MB.cr2. It may...and I stress may...be a good idea to actually use that 100MB file, for ERC, and surface roundness' sake, but I lean toward doubting that. ERC is like Kinematics, it changes the value of morph when certain others are changed. But where most of you're morphs are coming from different areas of the community I don't see this posing a problem. The more head MTs you have in a .cr2's head the more polygons you'l have also. This makes for more curve surface, but most figures, especially the Mil' Family, already ahve enough at default. It'll definately be a good idea to now copy compressed versions of these .cr2s to CD-R again!

Things get a bit tricky when you have a large V3 Master New Figure.cr2 with a whole bunch of set dials an you've acuired enough new MTs to warrant working on that character again. You'll need to check my pattented Flip Flop Mirror Technique! First make sure you have all your backups, as the margin for error here is large! Then load your V3 Master.cr2 into Morph Manager, add your new MTs, save, open it in Poser, apply ockham's ZeroMTs.py, and resave as V3 Master.cr2 again. Open Morph manager again, load your new V3 Master.cr2 and your V3 New Figure Master.cr2. Then copy over all of the head MTs from your V3 New Character Master to your V3 Master.cr2. When you do this all of the zero values of the V3 Master.cr MTs will be replaced by the incoming MT values. Now save the V3 Master.cr2 column as your V3 New Figure Master.cr2. There is no way, that I know of, to conveniently insure the new MTs end up at the top or the bottom of the Head Dials list, so you may be going over any dials you left at zero before twice, but I think its better to keep them in your V3 Master.cr2 than have deleted them for non-use with just one or two characters.

Of course, for distributions sake it may be a good idea to suppliment copyrighted MTs you've added with a percentage of your own origionally modeled(Be it with Poser's Magnet, Carrara or some other modeler) MTs. But, this should only be done only marginaly. Your concern gathering, and painstakingly grooming said collection need be recognized by the community at large for cherry!

I'll be making a tutorial with for this one of these days...

Anyone want to trade MT collections?

Her nostrils are too thin.

Er Odiemanc I may have a slight problem with your advice above in that I only have P4 no Propac or P5 hence no python. thanks tho I'll have another play Dave

I think I'm blind and brain dead after reading Odiemanc's post. wow. Lot of info in there. **goes back to reading War And Peace **

Doesn't anybody use InjectionPoseBuilder?? Easier than what little I read of Odie's post. Back from dentist bit woozie. Emily

I use it...I had just finished building an injection templete to fill in by hand, and then IPB came out and I just scrapped it. That one simple utility saves tons of work, trial, and frustration.

The Wanderer - Actually, Morph Manager can Zero All MTs, but there is a trick involved, I wasn't sure was going to work. First you need to load a standard .pz2 file. Then with the button you loaded that file you need to replace the loaded file with your .CR2 or .PZ3. Then the More Options Button stays available. Click it and you'll see a Zero All MTs function.

MachineClaw - I'm serious about a tut., for newbies, let me know what you think.

queri - Injection looks promising, but for now you'll still need to extract the MTs from your characters one at a time, untill it or Morph Manager automates this task. My guess is Morph Manager will do this first. I can't think of why you'd not then save yourself that Master.cr2 collection though. I think I'll wait for the program to have been around the block a few times, before I get serious, I like Spawning.

No takers on a trade, aye?

That is an incredible Linda Evangelista! I wish we could see her at DAZ, but I'm guessing there might be "issues" with that:(

Thanks. I like morphs and textures. I find it relaxing. :)

Wow! Anton, did you just do your Linda Evangelista pic using V3's morphs? That is an incredible likeness! Very nice!

Yeah I used the various face morphs and shaping morphs. I post worked the around the mouth a bit where she was alitlle puckered and the nostrils a tiny bit. But yeah I didn't make any new morphs.

Anton, that was a magnificent friggin' job. Really.

So, Anton... When are you going to post your recipes? ;p ~DM

I want to, Web guys are just busy right now. One of our webmasters went back to school and moved. Still hope to do it soon.

antonfindmelater