Hi all, Im attempting that classic trick - representing a real human in the form of a Poser character. So far, and many hours later, I seem to be ending up with something looking a million miles from the original face ;-( I guess I need to learn to look at facial features with more accuracy. Would anyone here have an interest in helping with this little project? - Id certainly be interested in just how close it might be possible to get in representing this real face. Thanks...

After a lot of time spent trying to do the same kind of thing I come to the following conclusions: 1) It's the face that counts, there aren't many body types 2) You'll never get the standard Poser 4 face to look like anyone real using the standard expression morphs 3) You'll spend forever creating new morphs to change it to look like a real person 4) A texture will do most of the work for you, but you have to model a new face to match it exactly, not the other way round Search this forum on "Ricardo" and you may still find my first attempt under the heading " does anyone recognise this lady" or something similar

Here is a previous thread that I saved because I thought the approach outlined by rtamesisi was very clever. Hope it helps... 1. image to poser prop by hunglikachicken on 04/09 11:41 can anybody tell me how to take a photograph of somebody's face and turn it into a poser head if at all possible. 2. Re: image to poser prop by rtamesis on 04/09 12:07 Take photographs of both front and side views at the very least under good lighting to get good detail and reduce shadows. Do not change the distance of the subject from the camera; you want to be able to match each feature between the two pictures. Use at least an 80mm-100 mm lens to minimize distortion, and zoom in to the head. In Poser, import the pictures as backgrounds for the different views; you can always switch backgrounds when you switch views. Zoom and position your Poser figure's head till it closely matches some reference point in the photograph, for example the eyes. Do that with the other view as well and don't change the camera settings thereafter. Once you've got all that set, load up some morphs and start fiddling away until you're satisfied with the appearance. You'll have to switch rendering modes frequently; I usually use the outline, the wireframe, and the full render modes to see what's happening. Also, you'll have to switch back and forth from front to side view to see what's happening too. It takes a lot of patience and experimentation with different morphs to finally achieve the look you want. Good luck! 3. Re: image to poser prop by buck on 04/09 13:56 [Delete] Neat technique, rtamesis... Would you then recommend building a facial texture from the photo to render with?? buck 4. Re: image to poser prop by rtamesis on 04/09 16:11 That would certainly help. Again, take lots of close up photographs to capture as much detail, and arrange your lighting in your studio to minimize shadows. You'll have to use a graphics app like Photoshop to adjust the contrast and to essentially assemble a mosaic of the photographs over the facial template and make them fit over each feature, i.e. lips, nose, etc. Paul Hafeli, I believe, has the best photorealistic textures around, and you can take a look at his work to see what I mean (also at BBay, where he sells some of them). You probably should be using texture maps at least 1400x1400 or higher if you want to capture the most detail in your Poser figure, but that may be limited by the amount of RAM available in your computer. Others here have said that tiff files are far better than jpg files because they have less pixelation; the only problem is that they are huge and demand more RAM to load into your Poser figure. Good luck!

I'm happy to try to help. Have you checked out my morph sets? http:/pages.hotobot.com/arts/momodot/ I have found using a photo on the texture to be very limited in utility, the bottom line in geometry and what you must do is look at each feature of the face including shape very analytically and use the apropriate morphing such as mine and Bushi's. Traveler's morphs are wonderfully but you need ti invest some serious time downloadinging them and ordering them by featre etc. before you can use them to do portraits. If you want to rteally get into portraits I think maybe you must buy Amorphium by Play which is what I use to make morphs per Traveler's teaching. I have benn using it to help dzarts here build his self portrait. I have been running the art program and teaching portrait painting at an art museum in the mid-west (painful move from new york!) and am a little harried since I'm moving to Toronto next month, but I would be more than happy to help you in your quest.

Hey Buck, any chance you would make a "visual" tutorial for us of your method? It would be greatly apreciated by me and a lot of other people I'm sure. As for your morphs, are you using magnets or morphs modeled in other software? Thanks. Polartech, buck is right re. photos as texture if you can use a big ass map and bring in the eyebrows and lips but the nose (and less so the cheeks) in a texture map are pretty unusable and you must morph. The head shape is cruectial (sorry bout my horendous spelling). And getting the profile, in the jaw and brow placement (essentially the z scaling of different parts of the face) which is why learning magnets is so important. I need to do some x and y axis scaling morphs, I haven't tried Bushi's yet.

Hell, I just lurve this place! Many thanks guys for the wonderful input... all your advice is very much appreciated.

Ricardo. I looked at the older thread and it is VERY interesting. Could you layout your methods here or as an email or as a tutorial? What modeler are you using? Is the idea that i very unformed model will take the texturemap better, kinda painting it over a smothed out face? I think that is how the kids toy Face Factory works, the texture map projeted on a super generalized head shape with no real edges. I am interested in this technique, as well as in actually morphing the head geometry to a portrait which seems somehow more purist but definately less practical.

Polartech: "I guess I need to learn to look at facial features with more accuracy.": Here's what you'd hear in the first year of art school -- stare at people at bus stops, try a few pencil sketches (different tool but it makes you think), read D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's 'On Growth and Form', study caricatures. My apologies if you are already far along in that. While your perfecting the face, don't neglect body build and posture, and hair (really the hardest part). Are you working toward one example character or a general capability? What's the challenge?

Imacken - thanks; I will take more time to examine the human face more closely - I have been amazed at just how hard a task it is proving to replicate a given set of features accurately. The situation Im in requires that I do just this for a friend whos trying to make a 3d talking model from studio shots of a real human. Owning Mimic, I thought this would be a breeze. On attempting the intitial character creation however, things are not as simple as they first seemed! Just wondered if there was anyone who specifically might enjoy the "challenge" of this situation, whether to sharpen their skills base and/or experience working to a tight deadline (a week). Oh, and there IS a fee payable to whomever makes it too ;-)

I'm not the one for the challenge, I wanted to draw that out so others might respond. With a one week deadline, you may have to settle for what you can do yourself. You have some good suggestions already, maybe if you have permission to post the studio shot along with your best effort it would spark some more. Mimic sounds cool, and I hear there's a mac version on the way. Are you working on the animations in parallel so you can swap in the finished head as last as necessary?